Abstract
Our understanding of people’s well-being was, until very recently, inferred from observable objective indicators such as their income and education. These measures were then aggregated to generate an average that characterized the city or region. With the growing availability of sample survey data, we now have at our disposal an increasing range of subjective measures of well-being that capture quality of life assessments made by individuals themselves. It is these internal measures of subjective well-being from microdata that are now being widely used throughout the social sciences to study what we call well-being or “happiness.”
Contemporary interest in subjective measures of well-being stems from a wish to supplement market-based criteria such as GDP per capita with other more direct measures of societal well-being. Subjective measures are particularly useful in areas where the distribution of outcomes is not easily identified using other, especially market, criteria. The effect of investment in public infrastructure or the provision of green space or in fostering community networks or in redeveloping neighborhoods can be captured in responses to questions on well-being, preferably over time. These subjective measures, which have been shown to be highly correlated with clinical and other assessments of well-being, are likely to be of particular interest in regional science because of the way changes to places result from, or generate, a range of positive or negative externalities.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Andrews FM, Withey SB (1976) Social indicators of wellbeing: American’s perceptions of life quality. Plenum Press, New York
Ballas D, Tranmer M (2012) Happy people or happy places? A multilevel modeling approach to the analysis of happiness and wellbeing. Int Reg Sci Rev 35(1):70–102
Bell AM (2002) Locally interdependent preferences in a general equilibrium environment. J Econ Behav & Organ 47(3):309–333
Berry BJL, Okulicz-Kozaryn A (2011) An urban–rural happiness gradient. Urban Geogr 32(6):871–883
Bonini AN (2008) Cross-national variation in individual life satisfaction: effects of national wealth, human development, and environmental conditions. Soc Indic Res 87(2):223–236
Campbell A (1981) The sense of wellbeing in America. McGraw Hill, New York
Cantril H (1965) The pattern of human concerns. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick
Cheshire PC, Monastiriotis V, Sheppard S (2003) Income inequality and residential segregation: labour market sorting and the demand for positional goods. In: Martin R, Morrison PS (eds) Geographies of labour market inequality. Routledge, London, pp 83–109
Clark WAV, Fossett M (2008) Understanding the social context of the Schelling segregation model. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105(11):4109–4114
Clark WAV, Morrison PS (2012) Socio-spatial mobility and residential sorting: evidence from a large-scale survey. Urban Stud 49(15):3253–3270
Clark WAV, Deurloo MC, Dieleman FM (1984) Housing consumption and residential mobility. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 74(1):29–43
Clark A, Etilé F, Postel-Vinay F, Senik C, Van der Straeten K (2005) Heterogeneity in reported wellbeing: evidence from twelve European countries. The Econ J 115:C118–C132
Clark AE, Frijters P, Shields MA (2008) Relative income happiness, and utility: an explanation for the Easterlin paradox and other puzzles. J Econ Lit 46(1):95–144
Dolan P, Peasgood T, White D (2008) Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the literature on the factors associated with subjective wellbeing. J Econ Psychol 29(1):94–122
Duesenberry JS (1949) Income, saving and the theory of consumer behaviour. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Durlauf SN (1996) A theory of persistent income inequality. J Econ Growth 1:75–79
Easterlin R (1974) Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In: David PA, Melvin WB (eds) Nations and households in economic growth. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, pp 89–125
Easterlin RA (2011) Happiness, growth and the life cycle. Oxford University Press for IZA, Oxford
Easterlin RA, Zimmermann AC (2008) Life satisfaction and economic conditions in East and West Germany pre- and post-unification. In Working paper SOEP (DIW, Berlin, Germany)
Easterlin RA, Angelescu L, Zweig JS (2011) The impact of modern economic growth on urban–rural differences in subjective wellbeing. World Dev 39(12):2187–2198
Ferrer-i-Carbonell A, Frijters P (2004) How important is methodology for the estimates of the determinants of happiness? The Econ J 114(497):641–659
Frank RH (2005) Positional externalities cause large and preventable welfare losses. Am Econ Rev 95(2):137–141
Frey BS, Stutzer A (2002) Happiness and economics: how the economy and institutions affect human well being. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Graham C (2011) The pursuit of happiness: an economy of wellbeing. Brookings Institution Press, Washington
Helliwell JF (2008) Life satisfaction and the quality of development. Working paper 14507, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA
Inglehart R, Rabier JR (1986) Aspirations adapt to situations – but why are the Belgians so much happier than the French? In: Andrews FM (ed) Research on the quality of life. Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp 1–56
Kahneman D, Krueger AB (2006) Developments in the measurement of subjective wellbeing. J Econ Perspect 20(1):3–24
Marans RW, Stimson RJ (2011) Investigating quality of urban life: theory, methods, and empirical research. Springer, London/New York
Marmot M (2005) The status syndrome: how social standing affects our health and longevity. Owl Books, New York
Merchante AJ, Ortega B (2006) Quality of life and economic convergence across Spanish regions, 1980–2001. Region Stud 40(5):471–483
Morrison PS (2011) Local expressions of subjective wellbeing: the New Zealand experience. Region Stud 45(8):1039–1058
Okulicz-Kozaryn A (2011) Geography of European life satisfaction. Soc Indic Res 101(3):435–445
Oswald AJ (2003) How much do external factors affect well being? Psychologist March 16(3):140–141
Pittau MG, Zelli R, Gelman A (2010) Economic disparities and life satisfaction in European regions. Soc Indic Res 96(2):339–361
Roback J (1982) Wages, rents and the quality of life. J Political Econ 90(6):1257–1278
Royuela V, Artis M (2006) Convergency analysis in terms of quality of life in the urban systems of the Barcelona province, 1991–2000. Region Stud 40(5):485–492
Schelling TC (1978) Micromotives and macrobehaviour. Norton, New York
Stark O, Wang YQ (2005) Towards a theory of self-segregation as a response to relative deprivation: steady-state outcomes of social welfare. In: Bruni L, Porta PL (eds) Economics and happiness: framing the analysis. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, pp 223–242
Stiglitz JE, Sen A, Fitoussi JP (2009) Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. (The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP))
Winkelmann R (2009) Unemployment, social capital, and subjective wellbeing. J Happiness Stud 10(4):421–430
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this entry
Cite this entry
Morrison, P.S. (2014). The Measurement of Regional Growth and Wellbeing. In: Fischer, M., Nijkamp, P. (eds) Handbook of Regional Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23430-9_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23430-9_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23429-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23430-9
eBook Packages: Business and Economics