“C1: A person in a poor country whose life is saved experiences less welfare than a person in a rich country whose life is saved”
(Asking a dumb question here, but,) is this true? Ie, does an increase in material wealth actually increase psychological wellbeing?
I have an intuition that psychological well-being is mostly affected by how wealthy you are compared to your peer group.
Maybe you’re talking about individuals poor countries who are below the poverty line (in which case, I agree that they would experience much less psychology wellbeing).
But I would be surprised if individuals in rich countries are actually happier than individuals in poor countries (who have all their basic needs met).
“C1: A person in a poor country whose life is saved experiences less welfare than a person in a rich country whose life is saved”
(Asking a dumb question here, but,) is this true? Ie, does an increase in material wealth actually increase psychological wellbeing?
I have an intuition that psychological well-being is mostly affected by how wealthy you are compared to your peer group.
Maybe you’re talking about individuals poor countries who are below the poverty line (in which case, I agree that they would experience much less psychology wellbeing).
But I would be surprised if individuals in rich countries are actually happier than individuals in poor countries (who have all their basic needs met).
So my understanding of the economics literature on income and subjective well-being is that currently we think that:
Relative income has a large effect on subjective well-being
Absolute income has a smaller effect on subjective well-being but the effect is still there
Relevant abstract: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=income+and+subjective+well-being&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1662383007403&u=%23p%3DXTFeCIDXcGcJ