The positive relationship between trust and happiness has been demonstrated by the literature. However, it is not clear how much this relationship depends on environmental conditions. The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 is considered one of the most catastrophic events in human history. This...

Are happiness patterns structurally the same when comparing poor and rich countries? Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that the relationships between subjective well-being and socioeconomic variables have a similar structure and is U-shaped in age in South Africa as in...

This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross-sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, we show that victims report significantly lower well-being than the non-victims, ceteris paribus. Happiness is lower for nonvictimized...

This paper investigates whether people’s psychological resilience to one of the most important economic shocks – job loss – can be predicted using early childhood characteristics. Using a longitudinal data that tracked almost 3000 children into adulthood, we showed that the negative effect...

Many recent writings in health policy have proposed that health be valued directly and in monetary terms using the new well-being valuation method. Yet there is no clear consensus on what the best measure of individual's experience may be for the evaluation process. To shed light on this issue,...

Using a nationally representative longitudinal data of the British people, this paper explores how different areas of a person's life are affected by unemployment. We find evidence that unemployment is preceded, on average, by a year of dissatisfaction with one's finance and job. Once...

Are happiness patterns structurally the same when comparing poor and rich countries? Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that the relationships between subjective well-being and socioeconomic variables have a similar structure and is U-shaped in age in South Africa as in...

Are certain groups of unemployed individuals hurt less by unemployment than others? This paper is an attempt to test the hypothesis that non- pecuniary costs of unemployment may vary between societies with different unemployment rates. Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show...

What determines people's moral judgments of selfish behaviors? Here we study whether people's normative views in trust and gift exchange games, which underlie many situations of economic and social significance, are themselves functions of positive emotions. We used experimental survey methods...