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

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目将研究使用自我报告作为幸福的措施，以期推进主观幸福感（SWB）的测量，并促进对这些措施是否以及如何能够和应该在政策中使用的理解。我们的分析基于不同“幸福”概念之间的区别。“一个概念与享乐幸福有关，这是一种在每时每刻经历的持续不断的感觉。另一种是对生活如何进行的总体看法，这来自于深思熟虑的判断。越来越多的证据表明，这两个概念反映了人类福祉的不同方面，它们对不同情况的反应也不同。该项目将使用美国和世界各地150多个国家的大型新数据集来探索这一区别。它将研究自我报告的幸福感的不同衡量标准如何与生活环境相关，特别关注年龄。关于主观幸福感在生命周期中如何变化，经济学和心理学中有几个假设，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，以及它们是否在世界各地普遍存在。最后一个主题是主观幸福感的相对程度，例如，幸福感是否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往往被误认为是相对性，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鼓励推迟退休等问题。这项工作的一个首要主题是了解自我幸福报告是否可以作为政策指南进行辩护，或者一些哲学家和经济学家对它们的批评是否足以排除它们。更好地理解适应也是最后一项奋进的关键。

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.