Exploring geographies of happiness and well-being in Britain

Dimitris BallasSocial and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) research group

Department of Geography

University of Sheffield

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/sasi

ESRC-funded research fellowshipUnderstanding Population Trends And Processes (UPTAP)

Aims (1)

• Investigate different definitions of happiness and explore the degree to which happiness varies over time and space

• Extend existing work on the perception of happiness by providing a detailed explanation of what are the factors and life events that make different types of individuals happy and how these affect the overall structure and cohesion of society.

• Produce an extensive critical review of existing theories of happiness.

• Add a geographical dimension to the existing research on happiness.

Aims (2)• Build a geographical model of happiness that will be

capable of providing information on the different degrees of happiness attained by people in different regions and localities, under alternative scenarios and happiness definitions.

• Produce an extensive critical review of existing theories of happiness.

• Examine the factors and life events affecting happiness during the lifetime of different types of individuals, in order to build a model capable of predicting the future trends in happiness and prosperity for different geographical areas.

• Explore the relationship between what defines happiness and socio-economic phenomena, such as unemployment and income inequalities

Aims (3)

• Use a simulation model to estimate the different degrees of happiness attained by people in different regions and localities, under alternative scenarios and happiness definitions.

• Examine the relationship of happiness and capability, on the basis of past relevant research (such as the work of Sen, 1993)

• Examine the possible impact of happiness of income and wealth redistribution

• Investigate the possible impact on happiness of basic income policies which could increase the economic independence of all individuals in society (Van Parijs, 1997 and 2001).

• Provide projections of how British society will look in the next 10 and 20 years, under alternative assumptions.

What is happiness?

• Greece, circa 500 BC• Socrates, Plato Aristotle (384-322 BC) Nichomachean Ethics (350 BC)http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

England, 18th centuryBentham (1748 – 1832), the principle of UtilityJohn Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) – Utilarianismhttp://www.utilitarianism.com/

What is happiness? Can it be measured?

Human perceptions of happiness vary and depend on a wide range of factors

What is the good life for man? The question of what is a full and rich life cannot be answered for an individual in abstraction from the society in which he lives

(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

Can happiness be measured?Happiness is subjective and no objective theory about the

ordinary concept of happiness has the slightest plausibility (Sumner, 1996)

What is happiness? Can it be measured?

A person who has had a life of misfortune, with very little opportunities, and rather little hope, may be more easily reconciled to deprivations than others reared in more fortunate and affluent circumstances. The metric of happiness may, therefore, distort the extent of deprivation in a specific and biased way.

(Sen, 1987: 45)Can happiness be measured?Oswald and Clark (2002): statistical regression models of

happiness measuring the impact of different life events upon human well being

Happiness and economics

• Happiness is defined as utility• Utility can be measured and compared

across people• Marginal utility of income is assumed to be

higher for poor people than for rich people

Hicks and Kaldor proposed a measure of national welfare similar to GDP adjusted for leisure and pollution

BUT can Happiness be measured?

Richard Layard (2005), Andrew Owswald (2002) and others argue that it can!

“By happiness I mean feeling good – enjoying

Life and feeling is wonderful. And by

Unhappiness I mean feeling bad and wishing things were different” (Layard, 2005)

General happiness Self Completion (4)Question Number and Text KS1L : Have you recently....been feeling reasonably happy, all things considered?

Value Label %

More so than usual 1 13.2

Same as usual 2 72.8

Less so than usual 3 11.8

Much less than usual 4 2.2

Source: The British Household Panel Survey, 2001

General Health Questionnaire (1) Have you recently:

• Been able to concentrate on whatever you are doing?

• Lost much sleep over worry?

• Felt that you are playing a useful part in things?

• Felt capable of making decisions about things?

• Felt constantly under strain?

• Felt you could not overcome your difficulties?

General Health Questionnaire (2) Have you recently:

• Been able to enjoy your normal day-to-day activities?

• Been able to face up to your problems?

• Been feeling unhappy or depressed?

• Been losing confidence in yourself?

• Been thinking of yourself as a worthless person?

• Been feeling reasonable happy all things considered?

Happiness in different activities (after Layard, 2005)

Happiness in different activities (after Layard, 2005)

Interacting with: Average happiness Friends 3.3Parents/relatives 3Spouse 2.8My children 2.7Co-workers 2.6Clients/customers etc 2.4Alone 2.2Boss 2

Can happiness be measured?

• Positive and negative feelings are inversely correlated

• Happiness can be thought of as a single variable (Layard, 2005)

Happiness and inequality

“A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But if a palace arises beside the little house, the little house shrinks to a hovel… [and]… the dweller will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.”

(Marx and Engels, 1848: 268)

Happiness and inequality

“When we are at home, most of us like to live in roughly the same style as our friends or neighbours, or better. If our friends start giving more elaborate parties, we feel we should do the same. Likewise if they have bigger houses or bigger cars.”

(Layard, 2005: 43)

Happiness and inequality

“… similarly at work, I compare my income with what my colleagues get, in so far as I hear about it. If they get a raise above inflation and I get inflation only, I get mad.”

(Layard, 2005: 44)

Happiness and inequality“Interviewing single mothers on council estates a few years

ago it was striking that most spoke about their depressing social isolation. They couldn’t afford to keep up with former friends, because they hadn’t the money to make even the most minimal gestures required of a friendship – sending birthday cards or buying rounds of drinks. As one said at the time; ‘My friends will offer to buy me a round - but I have to say no, because I can’t buy the next’. As a consequence, these women’s social circles had shrunk to their mothers and their lovers, because these were the only relationships which could be maintained without the expectation of financial reciprocity.”

(Russell, 2006: 93)

The “One Percent Is Always The Same” (OPIATS) rule

“This rule implies that if my income is $100,000 and I give $20,000 of it to the poor, my well-being falls by a fifth. If I divide my $20,000 equally between ten people with incomes of $10,000 ten people’s well-being will rise by a fifth. The gains from this gift will thus exceed the losses by a factor of ten. The utilitarian case for governmental redistribution almost always reflects this logic: taxing the rich won’t do them much harm, and helping the poor will do them a lot of good. If you look at the actual relationship between income and outcomes like health and happiness the OPIATS rule seldom describes the relationship perfectly but it comes far closer than the ‘One Dollar is Always the Same’ rule, which is the only rule under which income inequality does not affect health or happiness”.

(Jencks, 2002: 57)

Exploring geographies of happiness

• What is the degree of happiness attained by different types of individuals in various localities and regions in Britain? Does space matter?

• Happiness and inequality and space: rethinking regional economic policy

• Happiness, prosperity and regional/local GDP growth

• Is the source of happiness or unhappiness personal or it has more to do with inequalities in the distribution of income, wealth, skills and capability?

• Rivalry and geography – rivalries of place

Exploring geographies of happiness

“… the broad impression is that social class stratification establishes itself primarily as a national social structure, though there are perhaps also some more local civic hierarchies – for instance within cities and US states. But it should go without saying that classes are defined in relation to each other: one is higher because the other is lower, and vice versa. The lower class identity of people in a poor neighbourhood is inevitably defined in relation to a hierarchy which includes a knowledge of the existence of superior classes who may live in other areas some distance away.”

 (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2006: 7, my emphasis)

Links between income inequality and population health (Wilkinson and

Picket, 2006)

• The proportion of analyses classified as wholly supportive falls from 83% (of all wholly supportive or unsupportive) in the international studies to 73% in the large sub-national areas, to 45% among the smallest spatial units.

• The spatial scale at which people make their social comparisons is more likely to be the nation state (arguably reflecting socio-economic position) than it is to locality (reflecting position within neighbourhood).

Geographies of happiness in Britain

Source: The British Household Panel Survey, 2001

Region / Metropolitan Area * GHQ: general happiness Crosstabulation

% within Region / Metropolitan Area

4.5% 4.3% 14.4% 66.7% 7.7% 2.4% 100.0%2.8% 5.7% 10.6% 68.6% 10.2% 2.1% 100.0%2.2% 5.0% 11.9% 70.2% 9.1% 1.6% 100.0%1.7% 3.5% 11.3% 74.1% 8.0% 1.4% 100.0%2.1% 1.3% 10.0% 77.4% 8.5% .8% 100.0%2.2% 1.4% 10.9% 76.0% 8.3% 1.3% 100.0%

6.6% 4.6% 11.5% 66.0% 9.9% 1.3% 100.0%

.8% 2.2% 10.7% 73.7% 10.7% 2.0% 100.0%1.0% 2.6% 11.1% 75.2% 7.7% 2.4% 100.0%.4% 4.7% 9.9% 75.5% 8.6% .9% 100.0%

1.3% 4.0% 14.5% 70.7% 8.1% 1.3% 100.0%1.0% 1.7% 11.3% 71.0% 13.3% 1.7% 100.0%2.7% 2.7% 10.7% 73.9% 8.5% 1.4% 100.0%1.2% 5.5% 10.1% 76.5% 5.5% 1.2% 100.0%.4% 3.8% 14.0% 72.7% 6.8% 2.3% 100.0%

1.8% 2.3% 10.8% 72.3% 11.5% 1.5% 100.0%3.9% 1.5% 8.8% 70.9% 12.6% 2.3% 100.0%1.8% 2.3% 10.8% 74.0% 9.9% 1.3% 100.0%2.2% 3.4% 11.3% 72.2% 9.2% 1.6% 100.0%

Inner LondonOuter LondonR. of South EastSouth WestEast AngliaEast MidlandsWest MidlandsConurbation

R. of West MidlandsGreater ManchesterMerseysideR. of North WestSouth YorkshireWest YorkshireR. of Yorks & HumbersideTyne & Wear

R. of NorthWalesScotland

Region /MetropolitanArea

Total

Missingor wild

Proxyrespondent

More thanusual

Same asusual Less so Much less

GHQ: general happiness

Total

REGION BY SOCIAL CLASS[ CLASS 1 CLASS 2 CLASS 3 CLASSES 1 - 3 N

Rest of Yorks & Humberside 3.3 7.1 7.0 5.9 328

Tyne & Wear 10.0 7.1 3.4 7.2 264

East Midlands 5.3 8.1 11.2 7.9 782

Inner London 10.3 5.2 8.8 7.9 418

Rest of North West 4.9 9.2 12.3 8.5 454

South West 11.7 6.7 8.9 8.7 930

Greater Manchester 14.5 8.2 4.8 9.3 416

West Midlands Conurbation 10.5 8.9 8.8 9.3 453

East Anglia 10.7 6.5 13.3 9.5 390

Merseyside 17.6 9.2 0.0 9.5 233

West Yorkshire 14.5 7.7 9.6 10.2 364

Rest of South East 10.5 10.8 8.7 10.3 1,875

Outer London 8.9 13.3 6.9 10.7 668

Rest of West Midlands 8.9 11.6 14.9 11.5 506

Rest of North 19.7 10.4 8.5 12.4 400

Wales 11.1 12.9 15.3 13.0 533

South Yorkshire 17.6 11.6 24.2 15.4 293

Great Britain 10.5 9.3 9.7 9.8 10,264

Geographies of unhappiness in Britain

Spatial distribution of “unhappiness”

Modelling happiness and well-being

• Regression models• Multi-level modelling approaches

• Microsimulation and Spatial Microsimulation

What is microsimulation?

• A technique aiming at building large scale data sets

• Modelling at the microscale• A means of modelling real life

events by simulating the characteristics and actions of the individual units that make up the system where the events occur

A microsimulation approach to happiness research

A person who has had a life of misfortune, with very little opportunities, and rather little hope, may be more easily reconciled to deprivations than others reared in more fortunate and affluent circumstances. The metric of happiness may, therefore, distort the extent of deprivation in a specific and biased way.

(Sen, 1987: 45)

Towards geographical simulation models of happinessCensus of UK

population:• fine geographical detail• Small area data

available only in tabular format with limited variables to preserve confidentiality

• cross-sectional

British Household Panel Survey:

• sample size: more than 5,000 households

• Annual surveys (waves) since 1991

• Coarse geography• Household attrition

An extract from the BHPSPERSON

AHID PID AAGE12 SEX AJBSTAT … AHLLT AQFVOC ATENURE AJLSEG …

1 1000209

10002251

91 2 4 … 1 1 6 9 …

2 1000381

10004491

28 1 3 … 2 0 7 -8 …

3 1000381

10004521

26 1 3 … 2 0 7 -8 …

4 1000667

10007857

58 2 2 … 2 1 7 -8 …

5 1001221

10014578

54 2 1 … 2 0 2 -8 …

6 1001221

10014608

57 1 2 … 2 1 2 -8 …

7 1001418

10016813

36 1 1 … 2 1 3 -8 …

8 1001418

10016848

32 2 -7 … 2 -7 3 -7 …

9 1001418

10016872

10 1 -8 … -8 -8 3 -8 …

10 1001507

10017933

49 2 1 … 2 0 2 -8 …

11 1001507

10017968

46 1 2 … 2 0 2 -8 …

12 1001507

10017992

12 2 -8 … -8 -8 2 -8 …

A simplified version of Census data

Small area table 1 (household type)

Small area table 2 (economic activity of household head)

Small area table 3 (tenure status)

Area 1 Area 1 Area 1

60 "married couple households"

80 employed/self-employed

60 owner occupier

20 "Single-person households"

10 unemployed 20 Local Authority or Housing association

20 "Other" 20 other 20 Rented privately

Area 2 Area 2 Area 2

40 "married couple households"

60 employed/self-employed

60 owner occupier

20 "Single-person households"

20 unemployed 20 Local Authority or Housing association

40 "Other" 20 other 20 Rented privately

Spatial microsimulation procedures

The construction of a micro-dataset from samples and surveys

Static What-if simulations, in which the impacts of alternative policy scenarios on the population are estimated: for instance if there had been no poll tax in 1991 which communities would have benefited most and which would have had to have paid more tax in other forms?

Dynamic modelling, to update a basic micro-dataset and future-oriented what-if simulations: for instance if the current government had raised income taxes in 1997 what would the redistributive effects have been between different socio-economic groups and between central cities and their suburbs by 2007?

Towards geographical models of happiness

• adding a geographical dimension to explore the geography of well-being, based on the estimated database through the 1990s and early 2000s

• maps of well-being can be produced for different types of people (i.e. by age)

• Income and wealth inequalities and happiness (what does money buy you in different places?)