I agree that we have very little evidence so far about the tractability of economic growth interventions. I just think that Easterlin and O’Connor’s work should not make us think that economic growth interventions are any less useful than we would have otherwise thought. Since these sorts of regressions seem to show smaller impacts for health and pollution than GDP, maybe they should (very very slightly) update us towards thinking a little more of economic growth interventions than whatever our prior beliefs were.
I agree that all of the increases in regression coefficients are not that large in some absolute sense, and are in some sense luck. But the increases do seem to be large enough to flip us towards rejecting rather than accepting the Easterlin Paradox. This is statistical luck in some sense, but that just seems to show that the results are very sensitive to that sort of luck. So, as we both seem to agree, we don’t really have enough data to say if the Easterlin paradox holds.
I would love to see more work around estimating the expected costs and impacts of national health, pollution, social safety net, and growth policy on life satisfaction. I suspect that these sorts of change-on-change regressions would not end up being a large part of the evidence on which we based these estimates. Since there is so little data here, we might end up having to rely on judgements about individual policies’ chances of success. My point in the post was simply that Easterlin and O’Connor’s analysis does not seem to give us any evidence to suggest that GDP is likely to be less impactful than health or pollution.
I agree that we have very little evidence so far about the tractability of economic growth interventions. I just think that Easterlin and O’Connor’s work should not make us think that economic growth interventions are any less useful than we would have otherwise thought. Since these sorts of regressions seem to show smaller impacts for health and pollution than GDP, maybe they should (very very slightly) update us towards thinking a little more of economic growth interventions than whatever our prior beliefs were.
I agree that all of the increases in regression coefficients are not that large in some absolute sense, and are in some sense luck. But the increases do seem to be large enough to flip us towards rejecting rather than accepting the Easterlin Paradox. This is statistical luck in some sense, but that just seems to show that the results are very sensitive to that sort of luck. So, as we both seem to agree, we don’t really have enough data to say if the Easterlin paradox holds.
I would love to see more work around estimating the expected costs and impacts of national health, pollution, social safety net, and growth policy on life satisfaction. I suspect that these sorts of change-on-change regressions would not end up being a large part of the evidence on which we based these estimates. Since there is so little data here, we might end up having to rely on judgements about individual policies’ chances of success. My point in the post was simply that Easterlin and O’Connor’s analysis does not seem to give us any evidence to suggest that GDP is likely to be less impactful than health or pollution.