학술논문

Healthy, Wealthy, and Happy: The Joint Role of Health and Income in Explaining Global Life Satisfaction
Document Type
redif-article
Source
International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, Review of Income and Wealth. 70(1):33-59
Subject
Language
English
Abstract
Based on Gallup World Poll data, we explore the heterogeneous evolution of income, health, and well‐being within world population subgroups identified according to country, gender, age, and education, offering an integrated approach with wide geographical coverage. We provide novel evidence on the global “winners” and “losers” in life satisfaction between 2009 and 2018, showing that individuals located at the bottom of the global income distribution and those with poor health saw pronounced reductions in life satisfaction as opposed to populations with incomes falling between the 60th and the 80th centile and the healthy ones, who experienced significant improvements. Our results highlight that health is at least on a par with income in explaining life satisfaction, although there are considerable differences across world regions. In particular, health supersedes income in its relevance to life satisfaction, mostly in more affluent world regions, while the opposite holds in destitute parts of the world.