Social Interactions and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Latin America

In this paper, we seek to examine the effect of comparisons and social capital on subjective well-being. Furthermore, we test if, through social influence and exposure, social capital is either an enhancer or appeaser of the comparison effect. Using the Latinobarómetro Survey (2007) we find that in contrast to most previous studies, the comparison effect on well-being is positive; that is, the better others perform, the happier the individual is. We also find that social capital is among the strongest correlates of individuals’ subjective well-being in Latin American countries. Furthermore, our findings suggest that social contacts may enhance the comparison effect on individual’s happiness, which is more intense for those who perform worse in their reference group.

Bacantes de Eurípides: Felicidad iniciática y furia salvaje en el cortejo femenino de Dioniso

404 p. E-mail de contacto del autor: jbreviatti@yahoo.es

Evaluation of a programme to improve emotional intelligence during adolescence

348 p.

Air Quality and Europeans' Subjective Well-being

[EN]Happiness economics deals with self-reported subjective well-being, or life satisfaction, and its relationship to a wide variety of other variables. On the study of these other factors, this line of research has helped demonstrate that higher levels of environmental quality increase people’s subjective well-being. This paper focuses on analyzing the relationship between subjective well-being and air quality. On the one hand, the life satisfaction approach to environmental valuation is cautiously described, and on the other hand, the method is implemented in an empirical analysis that seeks to assess how an increase in the level of air pollution at a regional level affects individual-level subjective well-being in Europe. We use a dataset that merges the third wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) with a dataset that includes regional air pollution (including CO, PM10, NO2, SO2 and Benzene) and other regional variables. We find a robust negative impact for CO, a positive impact for SO2, and no conclusive evidence of any effect on subjective well-being for the remaining three pollutants.