The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans.
The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans.
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DOI：
10.1093/oep/gpr051
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发表时间：
2012-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Deaton A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Deaton A
大衰退与收入、财富和失业的巨大变化有关，这些变化影响了许多人的生活。自2008年1月以来，盖洛普组织每天收集1,000名美国人的日常数据，其中包括一系列自我报告的幸福感（SWB）问题。我用这些数据来研究经济衰退是如何影响人们的情感和评价生活的，以及其中的亚群体。在2008年秋天，雷曼兄弟破产前后，一直持续到2009年春天，在股市的底部，美国人报告说，他们的生活评价急剧下降，担忧和压力急剧增加，积极情绪下降。到2010年底，尽管失业率持续高企，但这些指标已基本恢复，尽管与2008年1月相比，担忧情绪仍然较高，生活评估较低。随着危机的展开，SWB指标在监测短期焦虑水平方面做得更好，而不是反映一两年内的经济演变。即使对收入和失业的宏观经济冲击很大，预计也只会对SWB措施产生很小和难以检测的影响。主观幸福感，尤其是对生活整体的评价，对问句顺序效应较为敏感。在生活评价问题之前问政治问题，会减少人们对生活的评价，即使是最糟糕的危机也会使其相形见绌。这些顺序效应一直持续到访谈的最深处，并制约着人们对享乐体验和生活水平满意度的报告。如果要使国家措施在空间和时间上具有可比性，就需要制定和测试控制这些影响的方法。
The Great Recession was associated with large changes in income, wealth, and unemployment, changes that affected many lives. Since January 2008, the Gallup Organization has been collecting daily data on 1,000 Americans each day, with a range of self-reported well-being (SWB) questions. I use these data to examine how the recession affected the emotional and evaluative lives of the population, as well as of subgroups within it. In the fall of 2008, around the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and lasting into the spring of 2009, at the bottom of the stock market, Americans reported sharp declines in their life evaluation, sharp increases in worry and stress, and declines in positive affect. By the end of 2010, in spite of continuing high unemployment, these measures had largely recovered, though worry remained higher and life evaluation lower than in January 2008. The SWB measures do a much better job of monitoring short-run levels of anxiety as the crisis unfolded than they do of reflecting the evolution of the economy over a year or two. Even large macroeconomic shocks to income and unemployment can be expected to produce only small and hard to detect effects on SWB measures. SWB, particularly evaluation of life as a whole, is sensitive to question order effects. Asking political questions before the life evaluation question reduces reported life evaluation by an amount that dwarfs the effects of even the worst of the crisis; these order effects persist deep into the interview, and condition the reporting of hedonic experience and of satisfaction with standard of living. Methods for controlling these effects need to be developed and tested if national measures are to be comparable over space and time.