ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Last time I checked income by state versus the ACCRA cost-of-living calculations, which are used by corporations to figure the change in salary appropriate for employees being transferred around the country (and thus include cost of owned housing and not just rent), Minnesota (awful weather) had the highest standard of living in the country. The bottom for standard of living were California (fine weather), Hawaii (great weather), and Washington DC (power).
Huh? I thought that this was exactly Ely's point. Any advantage of California is quickly negated by free entry.
Excellent point about the compensating differentials. CA's climate and geography are great. But to get it, one also suffers high crime, lofty housing prices even after the crash, lost time in traffic (try going SF or even Alameda from Berkeley at 4 pm), etc.
For some reason I cannot access the Schkade & Kahneman paper. I'll try googling later.
I am familiar with the concept of compensating differentials from The Armchair Economist. However, it does not explain the more recent finding by Oswald and Wu (SciencExpress 2009) that people are actually less happy in California than in most other States. How is it possible for different States to have different levels of happiness, when there are no barriers to migration? several explanations come to mind:
* the indifference principle holds at equilibrium, and right now there is no equilibrium, because there is net emigration from California (counting only US citizens);
* the indifference principle does not hold: people over-rate good weather and beaches;
* unhappy people are less unhappy in New York and California, happy people are most happy in Louisiana and Hawaii, so even if everybody emigrates rationally, people in New York and California are still the least happy.
Is there anything wrong with my reasoning? is there any other possible factor?
> When people answer a question about their
> own life satisfaction, however, their
> attention is focused on more central
> aspects of life.
The greater social science question, of course, is how good of a measurement instrument is the survey when it comes to measuring things like happiness.
The focusing illusion is absolutely a problem with this sort of study, but the focusing illusion can exist and yet still not represent an actual error. It might also be the case that the instrument in question cannot entirely capture what you're attempting to measure. So you get what looks like counterintuitive results, and blame it on focusing illusion, when in fact your instrument is limited or outright broken (disclaimer: I haven't read the referenced paper yet, so it's unfair to state categorically that this is the case in this particular instance).
I'm not terribly big on the use of a single instrument to measure something as complex as happiness; it presupposes that each individual is capable of measuring their own level of happiness for one thing, and that's just plain crazy-talk. I have a bipolar alcoholic relative who would fill out a happiness survey and come across as completely content, but it is absolutely plain to anyone that the subject isn't capable of being truthful with themselves about their own happiness.
Lots of people think their marriage is completely happy, until they find out their partner is miserable when the divorce papers get served, for a far less extreme example.
It might be suitable to measure *contentment* using a fairly simple instrument, since contentment itself isn't an extreme state. But "happiness" (or "unhappiness") represents generally an exception to the norm of human conditions.
If you want to measure something like happiness, you need a collection of instruments to get anything resembling a reasonable metric, IMO.
California is kind of two states. Northern Californians -- not generally happier. Southern Californias -- generally happier.
Check out twittermood
http://barabasilab.neu.edu/projects/twittermood/
You'll have to zoom out, scroll over, and zoom in to see how Nor Cal is more purple and So Cal more orange.
This might also be a near-far effect; the factors that seem to us important in far mode might just not make much difference our near perceptions when we are actually there.