Nous remercions toutes celles et tous ceux qui ont assisté à la conférence de présentation du Bien-être en France le 08 février dernier. Les vidéos de l’événement sont maintenant en ligne. Tant la richesse des discussions que l’intérêt suscité nous ont convaincus de l’intérêt d’un rendez-vous régulier sur ce point. Nous commençons donc déjà à travailler sur l’édition 2021 !
Outre notre sélection d’articles, nous vous rappelons ce mois-ci la publication, le 20 mars prochain, de l’édition 2021 du World Happiness Report, sur le thème cette année des conséquences de l’épidémie de Covid-19.
Observatoire
Le Bien-être en France : Rapport 2020
Vous avez été nombreuses et nombreux à nous rejoindre pour la conférence de présentation du Rapport. Merci à vous, et surtout un grand merci aux intervenantes et intervenants, qui nous ont donné une conversation riche en perspectives de travail.
Vous pouvez retrouver les enregistrements vidéo de la conférence sur la page du rapport.
Covid-19 et monde d’après : quelles ruptures dans les anticipations ?
Alors qu’on parle beaucoup du « monde d’après » (après le Covid-19), nous nous sommes demandé si l’épidémie avait eu une influence sur la préférence pour le présent ou l’appétence pour le futur dans notre enquête trimestrielle. Nous n’observons pas de rupture nette, ni dans la proportion de personnes qui préfèrent le présent à toute autre période de l’histoire, s’ils pouvaient choisir quand ils voudraient vivre, ni dans la (faible) envie de vivre dans le futur.
Le bien-être s’apprend
Suite à sa participation à l’analyse du programme « Exploring what Matters », Christian Krekel donne dans Centerpiece un résumé accessible de cette expérimentation et de ses résultats. Exploring what Matters comprend huit sessions hebdomadaires d’une heure et demie, où les participants discutent sous la direction de volontaires d’un thème lié au bien-être : qu’est-ce qui est important dans la vie ? Comment donner du sens à son travail ? Comment construire des communautés plus heureuses ? La discussion est suivie par un engagement des participants à œuvrer en ce sens (engagement moral auprès des auprès des autres participants, définition d’objectifs pour soi, etc.). Dans un cadre aléatoire contrôlé, la participation à ces ateliers entraîne une augmentation de la satisfaction dans la vie et de la confiance interpersonnelle, et une diminution des symptômes axieux et dépressifs.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Daisy Fancourt, Christian Krekel and Richard Layard, “A local community course that raises mental wellbeing and pro-sociality”, CEP discussion paper, CEP discussion paper, 2020.
World Happiness Report 2021
L’édition 2021 du World Happiness Report sera présentée en ligne le 20 mars prochain. Logiquement, cette édition sera dominée par ce que l’épidémie a eu comme impact sur le bien-être.
Covid-19
La DEPP et l’impact de la crise sanitaire
Face aux conséquences de la crise sanitaire sur les élèves et leurs familles, la Direction de l’évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance (DEPP) du Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de la jeunesse et des sports à mis en place un ensemble de dispositifs de mesure et d’analyse. Celui-ci comprend en particulier des enquêtes spécifiques, l’enrichissement d’enquêtes existantes, et l’exploitation des dispositifs exhaustifs, par exemple les évaluations nationales.
Ces travaux ont déjà fait l’objet de plusieurs publications, par exemple
20.26 : Crise sanitaire de 2020 et continuité pédagogique : les élèves ont appris de manière satisfaisante, Mériam Barhoumi, Laurent Blouet, Axelle Charpentier, Sophie Cristofoli, Hélène Fréchou, Tamara Hubert, Enzo Iasoni, Alexis Lermite, Hélène Michaudon, Robin Moyère, Danaé Odin-Steiner, Christelle Raffaëlli, Anaëlle Solnon, Alexia Stefanou, Mustapha Touahir, Boubou Traore, Philippe Wuillamier, DEPP-B
20.42 : Confinement : un investissement scolaire important des élèves du second degré, essentiellement différencié selon leur niveau scolaire, Meriam Barhoumi, DEPP-B1
Rappelons aussi que la DEPP publie une très utile liste thématique de ses notes d’analyse.
ESS Call for papers
During its almost 20 years of data collection, the ESS has maintained the highest methodological standards in cross-national data collection. A key aim of the ESS has always been to implement high quality standards in its methodology and to improve standards in the field of cross-national surveys more generally. Measuring attitudes cross-nationally faces challenges that go beyond those of surveys conducted in a single country or using a single language. To face these challenges, the ESS includes measurement instruments that are harmonized across countries by design while accounting for specificities of the participating countries.
To evaluate the quality of these measures and the comparability across national versions this call for papers seeks contributions to address:
- the development of new measures in the ESS
- adaptations of measures for the cross-national ESS
- the national adaptations of ESS measures
- evaluating psychometric/measurement quality of ESS measures or their measurement equivalence, or
- general advances in methodology, exemplified with ESS data
Submission may be both original academic articles as well as shorter research notes.
Dealine (abstract): April 1st, 2021
Full call: https://measurementinstrumentssocialscience.biomedcentral.com/ess
Lu sur le web
Time Use and Life Satisfaction within Couples: A Gender Analysis for Belgium
Abstract: This study looks at the time allocations of individuals with a focus on paid and unpaid work, its division within the households, as well as its link with life satisfaction. The analysis is performed for Belgium in 2016 using the MEqIn database, a database containing information on both partners in the household. Time use by men and women appears to be quite different. Men are found to be more active in the paid activities and women in the unpaid ones. The link between time use and life satisfaction appears to be different for each gender as well. As in previous tudies, women are found to be happier when working part-time. However, the usual conclusion that they follow traditional gender norm is challenged as it appears that this result remains only when they also undertake the majority of the unpaid work. This supports the idea that women active on the paid labor market suffer from a double burden. We then look at the within household interdependencies in the time allocations and at the link these can have with the subjective well-being of both men and women. Doing so, it appears that men’s behavior can be related to the gender-identity hypothesis, and more precisely to its bread-winner version, while women’s behavior is closer to a egalitarian vision of the division of work. We further observe that those behaviors are softened by the presence of children.
De Rock, Bram and Perilleux, Guillaume, (2021), Time Use and Life Satisfaction within Couples: A Gender Analysis for Belgium, No 2021-01, Working Papers ECARES, ULB — Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Job seekers’ beliefs and the causes of long-term unemployment
Abstract: Longer spells of unemployment are associated with worse employment prospects, but there has been no consensus in the literature on what drives the decline in employment prospects. This column uses data on elicited beliefs of unemployed job seekers to uncover the forces driving long-term unemployment. It shows that 85% of the decline in job-finding rates is due to intrinsic differences across job-finding ‘types’, rather than a deterioration of skills during unemployment. Improving job seekers’ information about employment prospects may help reduce costly long-term unemployment.
Andreas I. Mueller, Johannes Spinnewijn, Giorgio Topa, “Job seekers’ beliefs and the causes of long-term unemployment”, VoxEU, 29 January 2021
Up to a fifth of adults have mental health problems in midlife
L’analyse de trois cohortes britanniques (nées en 1946, 1958 et 1970) met en évidence la présence d’un midlife low en termes de santé mentale, amis aussi des écarts significatifs entre cohortes.
Résumé pour le Centre for Longitudinal Studies (UCL)
Gondek, D., Bann, D., Patalay, P., Goodman, A., McElroy, E., Richards, M., & Ploubidis, G. (2021). Psychological distress from early adulthood to early old age: Evidence from the 1946, 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts. Psychological Medicine, 1-10. doi:10.1017/S003329172000327X
Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars
This paper reports the results of the first systematic attempt at quantitatively measuring the seminar culture within economics and testing whether it is gender neutral. We collected data on every interaction between presenters and their audience in hundreds of research seminars and job market talks across most leading economics departments, as well as during summer conferences. We find that women presenters are treated differently than their male counterparts. Women are asked more questions during a seminar and the questions asked of women presenters are more likely to be patronizing or hostile. These effects are not due to women presenting in different fields, different seminar series, or different topics, as our analysis controls for the institution, seminar series, and JEL codes associated with each presentation. Moreover, it appears that there are important differences by field and that these differences are not uniformly mitigated by more rigid seminar formats. Our findings add to an emerging literature documenting ways in which women economists are treated differently than men, and suggest yet another potential explanation for their under-representation at senior levels within the economics profession.
Pascaline Dupas, Alicia Sasser Modestino, Muriel Niederle, Justin Wolfers, and the Seminar Dynamics Collective, “Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars”, january 2021.
Trajectories of adolescent life satisfaction
Abstract: Increasing global policy interest in measuring and improving population wellbeing has prompted many academic investigations into the dynamics of life satisfaction across the lifespan. While numerous international projects now track adults’ life satisfaction trajectories, little research has simultaneously assessed both adults and adolescents using comparable samples and techniques. Yet adolescence harbours developmental changes that could affect wellbeing far into adulthood: adolescent life satisfaction trajectories are, therefore, critical to map and understand. Analysing data from 91,267 UK participants aged 10-80 years, sampled annually for up to 9 years, this study investigates how life satisfaction develops throughout adolescence. Using a latent growth curve approach, we find a decrease in life satisfaction during adolescence, which is steeper than at any other point across adolescence and adulthood. Further, adolescent females’ life satisfaction decreases earlier than males’; this is the only substantial gender difference in life satisfaction that emerges across the wide age range studied. The study highlights the importance of adopting a lifespan perspective with respect to subjective wellbeing in areas spanning research, policy and practice.
Orben, Amy, Richard E. Lucas, Delia Fuhrmann, and Rogier Kievit. 2020. “Trajectories of Adolescent Life Satisfaction.” PsyArXiv. August 20. doi:10.31234/osf.io/y8ruw.
Family Size and Subjective Well-being in Europe: Do More Children Make Us (Un)Happy?
Abstract: We estimate the causal relationship between the number of children and parental subjective well-being using the 2013 wave of SILC data and relying on multiple births as the source of exogenous variation. The major value added of our study is estimating this effect by children’s age. We show that parents of larger families experience the same or higher levels of well-being than parents of smaller families. The positive effect is mainly driven by parents of teenage children. Among parents of pre-school children we mainly estimate a negative effect of an additional (twin) child. We further show that the negative relationship between the number of children and parental well-being at young child ages is mainly driven by dissatisfaction with accommodation and by increased frequency of feeling nervous. The positive effect at higher child ages is driven by satisfaction with financial situation only for fathers, while for mothers it is mainly driven by lower frequency of experiencing negative feelings. We conclude that higher fertility levels might be reached if parents receive more help during the early years of their children and if the positive future effects of having large families are publicized.
Pertold-Gębicka, Barbara and Spolcova, Dominika, (2020), Family Size and Subjective Well-being in Europe: Do More Children Make Us (Un)Happy?, CERGE-EI Working Papers, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute, Prague.
Does Taking a Short Break from Social Media Have a Positive Effect on Well-being? Evidence from Three Preregistered Field Experiments
Abstract: Concerns about the consequences of social media use on well-being has led to the practice of taking a brief hiatus from social media platforms, a practice known as “digital detoxing.” These brief “digital detoxes” are becoming increasingly popular in the hope that the newly found time, previously spent on social media, would be used for other, theoretically more rewarding, activities. In this paper, we test this proposition. Participants in three preregistered field experiments (ntot = 600) were randomly assigned to receiving each of two conditions on each of two different days: a normal-use day or an abstinence day. Outcomes (social relatedness, positive and negative affect, day satisfaction) were measured on each of the two evenings of the study. Results did not show that abstaining from social media has positive effects on daily well-being (in terms of social relatedness, positive and negative affect, day satisfaction) as suggested by the extant literature. Participants reported similar well-being on days when they used social media and days when they did not. Evidence indicated that abstinence from social media had no measurable positive effect on well-being, and some models showed significant deficits in social relatedness and satisfaction with one’s day. We discuss implications of the study of social media hiatus and the value of programmatic research grounded in preregistered experimental designs.
Przybylski, A.K., Nguyen, Tv.T., Law, W. et al. Does Taking a Short Break from Social Media Have a Positive Effect on Well-being? Evidence from Three Preregistered Field Experiments. J. technol. behav. sci. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-020-00189-w
Le bien-être territorial : repenser les politiques publiques à travers l’hospitalité sur notre territoire
Résumé : Inspirée par les travaux de la région Hauts-de-France et de l’université de Lille, une démarche pilotée par l’Agence et la Métropole Européenne de Lille a été mise en place sur le bien-être territorial. Elle vise à renouveler la vision territoriale grâce à la création de nouveaux indicateurs et à la mise en place d’une véritable stratégie d’hospitalité sur notre territoire. Celle-ci se fera avec et pour le citoyen en s’intéressant tant au bien-être objectif que subjectif.
https://www.adu-lille-metropole.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/4-Pages-48-Janvier-WEB.pdf
What Do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence
Abstract: What utility notion do self-reported well-being (SWB) questions measure? We clarify the assumptions that underlie existing applications regarding the (i) life domains, (ii) time horizons, and (iii) other-regarding preferences captured by SWB data. We ask survey respondents what they had in mind regarding (i)–(iii) when answering commonly used—life satisfaction, happiness, ladder—and new SWB questions. Respondents put most weight on the present and on themselves—but not enough to interpret SWB data as measuring notions of flow utility and self-centered utility. We find differences across SWB questions and across sociodemographic groups. We outline actionable suggestions for SWB researchers.
Daniel J. Benjamin, Jakina Debnam Guzman, Ori Heffetz, Marc Fleurbaey & Miles S. Kimball, “What Do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence”, NBER Working Paper, n°28438, doi:10.3386/w28438
Measuring national happiness with music
Abstract: We propose a new measure for national happiness based on the emotional content of a country’s most popular songs. Using machine learning to detect the valence of the UK’s chart-topping song of each year since the 1970s, we find that it reliably predicts the leading survey-based measure of life satisfaction. Moreover, we find that music valence is better able to predict life satisfaction than a recently-proposed measure of happiness based on the valence of words in books (Hills et al., 2019). Our results have implications for the role of music in society, and at the same time validate a new use of music as a measure of public sentiment.
Benetos, Emmanouil, Ragano, Alessandro, Sgroi, Daniel and Tuckwell, Anthony, (2021), Measuring national happiness with music, The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS), University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
Unemployment and subjective well-being
Abstract: This chapter summarizes the latest state of the art in economic research on unemployment and subjective well-being. Outcomes covered are general life satisfaction, affective well-being, and mental health. Special attention is paid to empirical evidence as obtained from popular panel data sets. Both prominent methodological issues and substantive themes are introduced. Topics covered include the estimation of non-pecuniary costs of unemployment, unemployment over time, the role of others’ unemployment, spill-over effects, and re-employment, among others.
Suppa, Nicolai, (2021), Unemployment and subjective well-being, No 760, GLO Discussion Paper Series, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
Can we be happier?
Abstract: If the goal for society is the greatest possible all-round happiness, how can that be achieved? Richard Layard and George Ward outline the evidence on what explains the huge variation in people’s life satisfaction – and how we can boost wellbeing, both through public policy and in our jobs and private lives.
Layard, Richard and Ward, George, (2020), Can we be happier?, CentrePiece – The Magazine for Economic Performance, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
On a Japanese Subjective Well-Being Indicator Based on Twitter data
Abstract: This study presents for the first time the SWB-J index, a subjective well-being indicator for Japan based on Twitter data. The index is composed by eight dimensions of subjective well-being and is estimated relying on Twitter data by using human supervised sentiment analysis. The index is then compared with the analogous SWB-I index for Italy, in order to verify possible analogies and cultural differences. Further, through structural equation models, a causal assumption is tested to see whether the economic and health conditions of the country influence the well-being latent variable and how this latent dimension affects the SWB-J and SWB-I indicators. It turns out that, as expected, the economic and health welfare is only one aspect of the multidimensional well-being that is captured by the Twitter-based indicator.
Carpi, Tiziana, Hino, Airo, Iacus, Stefano and Porro, Giuseppe, (2020), On a Japanese Subjective Well-Being Indicator Based on Twitter data, Papers, arXiv.org.