Thanks for this. It has rocked some of my priors—I don’t believe in Easterlin’s paradox anymore. On the other hand:
The health regression estimates how much a decrease in the number of years people in a country lose to ill health corresponds to increases in happiness. This regression produces coefficients that are either an order of magnitude smaller than the GDP regression, or negative, depending on whether we exclude countries that have less than 12 years of data.
I agree that, by modus tollens, this shows one should be suspicious of Easterlin’s overall argument. But I think that this metric is not the best proxy to measure increase in welfare due to better health. I’d be surprised if lives saved increased average life satisfaction. Even from an individual point of view, and even though most people have a strong preference for surviving and usually see their lives as net positive, I don’t think that avoiding death makes the person much happier quite often people surviving accidents and disease become traumatized or more careful about life).
Also, I’d be astonished if it made this person happier than the population mean – which is required for us to observe an increase in average life satisfaction. I guess the people most likely to die are precisely those who tend to be less “happy” in most metrics (e.g., depressive individuals, or the poor, or people with health conditions…); so one can intuitively conceive of a reduction in average happiness by decreasing some deaths. Thus, unless one adopts some weird position in population ethics (or bites the bullet and becomes a hedonic utilitarian villain willing to let sad people die), I don’t think it’s bad news that your “r-squared of the regression is essentially 0”.
That’s an interesting point. It sounds like you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction. I could try to argue that everyone being a little healthier for the first 70 years of their life would mean less unemployment, loneliness and chronic pain, and that those effects would be larger than the ones you bring up. But I don’t think that’s likely.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
Agreed, and I commend you for this.
On the other hand, I’m afraid we might be talking past each other here (though I’m not sure how important this is):
you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction
I didn’t say that—my fault, I think I wasn’t clear enough. I’m pretty sure I would be less satisfied with life if my health was worse, and I think one can extrapolate that for most people—just ask them, or observe how their satisfaction decreases after they get sick, or compare sick and healthy people, etc.
What I said is that my average satisfactionwouldn’t increase if my life was saved. And I meant that your regression using “number of years people in a country lose to ill health” is probably a poor proxy for what you’re trying to measure (i.e., better health vis-a-vis life satisfaction). This is because your metric health years is probably dominated by averted deaths (especially if one is tracking marginal improvements), and average life satisfaction only measures the welfare of those who are alive—because the dead don’t speak.
Take world1: I suddenly die of disease on my 6th birthday, and world2: my life is saved on my 6th birthday. There’s no reason to believe that:
a) I’d happier than usual (i.e., the average) on the day following my birthday in world2, or that
b) my average happiness in world1 is smaller than in world2 (either measured on 6th or on my 30th birthday).
(I now realize this might explain why some scholars use increases in mean height to measure the effects of health improvements—because this is likely more robust)
I think we are on the same page here. I was just using “improve life satisfaction” as shorthand for “improve average life satisfaction across the whole population.”
Thanks for this. It has rocked some of my priors—I don’t believe in Easterlin’s paradox anymore. On the other hand:
I agree that, by modus tollens, this shows one should be suspicious of Easterlin’s overall argument. But I think that this metric is not the best proxy to measure increase in welfare due to better health. I’d be surprised if lives saved increased average life satisfaction. Even from an individual point of view, and even though most people have a strong preference for surviving and usually see their lives as net positive, I don’t think that avoiding death makes the person much happier quite often people surviving accidents and disease become traumatized or more careful about life).
Also, I’d be astonished if it made this person happier than the population mean – which is required for us to observe an increase in average life satisfaction. I guess the people most likely to die are precisely those who tend to be less “happy” in most metrics (e.g., depressive individuals, or the poor, or people with health conditions…); so one can intuitively conceive of a reduction in average happiness by decreasing some deaths. Thus, unless one adopts some weird position in population ethics (or bites the bullet and becomes a hedonic utilitarian villain willing to let sad people die), I don’t think it’s bad news that your “r-squared of the regression is essentially 0”.
That’s an interesting point. It sounds like you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction. I could try to argue that everyone being a little healthier for the first 70 years of their life would mean less unemployment, loneliness and chronic pain, and that those effects would be larger than the ones you bring up. But I don’t think that’s likely.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
Agreed, and I commend you for this.
On the other hand, I’m afraid we might be talking past each other here (though I’m not sure how important this is):
I didn’t say that—my fault, I think I wasn’t clear enough. I’m pretty sure I would be less satisfied with life if my health was worse, and I think one can extrapolate that for most people—just ask them, or observe how their satisfaction decreases after they get sick, or compare sick and healthy people, etc.
What I said is that my average satisfaction wouldn’t increase if my life was saved. And I meant that your regression using “number of years people in a country lose to ill health” is probably a poor proxy for what you’re trying to measure (i.e., better health vis-a-vis life satisfaction). This is because your metric health years is probably dominated by averted deaths (especially if one is tracking marginal improvements), and average life satisfaction only measures the welfare of those who are alive—because the dead don’t speak.
Take world1: I suddenly die of disease on my 6th birthday, and world2: my life is saved on my 6th birthday. There’s no reason to believe that:
a) I’d happier than usual (i.e., the average) on the day following my birthday in world2, or that
b) my average happiness in world1 is smaller than in world2 (either measured on 6th or on my 30th birthday).
(I now realize this might explain why some scholars use increases in mean height to measure the effects of health improvements—because this is likely more robust)
I think we are on the same page here. I was just using “improve life satisfaction” as shorthand for “improve average life satisfaction across the whole population.”