Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being: Aging, Religiosity, and Adaptation

说明(申请人提供)：该项目将研究使用自我报告作为幸福的衡量标准，以期推进主观幸福感的衡量，并增进对这种措施是否可以以及如何在政策中使用的理解。我们的分析基于不同的“幸福”概念之间的区别。一个概念与享乐幸福有关，指的是时时刻刻都在体验的持续的情感流动。另一种是对生活的整体看法，这来自于深思熟虑的判断。越来越多的证据表明，这两个概念涵盖了人类福祉的不同方面，并且它们对不同的情况做出了不同的反应。该项目将使用美国和全球150多个国家的大型新数据集来探索这种区别。它将考察自我报告幸福感的不同衡量标准如何与生活环境相关，并特别关注年龄。经济学和心理学中有几个关于主观幸福感在生命周期中应该如何变化的假设，这些假设将组织我们的调查。另一个主要的研究方向是宗教信仰在幸福中的作用；这项研究将寻求更好地理解宗教信仰的决定因素--为什么人们随着年龄的增长变得更加虔诚，为什么女性比男性更虔诚--以及宗教的好处或代价，以及它们在世界各地是否普遍存在。最后一个话题是主观幸福感的相对程度，例如，幸福感是取决于一个人自己的收入，还是取决于相对于他人收入的收入。一种假设是，众所周知的适应现象经常被误认为是相对论，这对思考老年人的经济政策有重要影响，包括对社会保障福利征税或推迟退休激励等问题。这项工作的一个首要主题是，理解自我幸福感报告是否可以被辩解为政策指南，或者一些哲学家和经济学家对这些报告的批评是否足以排除它们。更好地理解适应也是这最后一次努力的关键。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The project will study the use of self-reports as measures of well-being, with a view to advancing the measurement of subjective well-being (SWB) and to advancing the understanding of whether and how such measures can and should be used in policy. Our analysis rests on the distinction between different concepts of "happiness." One concept relates to hedonic well-being, the continuous flow of feelings that is experienced on a moment to moment basis. The other is an overall view of how life is going, which comes from a considered judgment. Accumulating evidence suggests that these two concepts capture different aspects of human well- being, and that they respond differently to different circumstances. The project will explore this distinction using large new data sets for the United States and for more than 150 countries around the world. It will look at how the different measures of self-reported well-being are related to life circumstances, with a particular focus on age. There are several hypotheses in economics and psychology about how SWB should change over the life- cycle, and these will organize our investigations. Another major line of investigation is the role of religiosity in well-being; the research will seek to better understand the determinants of religiosity-why people become more religious as they age, why women are more religious than men-as well as the benefits or costs of religion and whether they are or are not universal around the world. The final topic is the extent to which subjective well-being is relative so that, for example, whether well-being depends on a person's own income, or instead on income relative to the income of others. One hypothesis is that the well-known phenomenon of adaptation can often be mistaken for relativity, and that this has important consequences for thinking about economic policy for the elderly, including such issues as the taxation of social security benefits or incentives for postponing retirement. An overarching theme of the work is to understand whether self-reports of well-being can be defended as guides to policy, or whether the criticisms of them by some philosophers and economists are sufficient to rule them out. A better understanding of adaptation is also a key for this last endeavor.