1. Happiness, Lottery Winners, and Your Heart Andrew Oswald Warwick University * Much of this work is joint with coauthor Nick Powdthavee. I also owe a great debt to the work of David G Blanchflower, Andrew Clark, Paul Frijters, and Justin Wolfers.

2. I would like to address 3 issues.

3. #1

4. In the 21 st century, should our society’s goal be happiness rather than GDP?

5. #2

6. What actually happens to a person when they get a lot of money (say by winning the lottery)?

7. #3

8. Could physiological measures, like heart rate and blood pressure, be used as proxies for well- being?

9. So is modern society going in a good direction?

10. Are we getting happier?

11. The Easterlin Paradox

12. Average Happiness and Real GDP per Capita for Repeated Cross-sections of Americans.

13. Life-Satisfaction Levels in European Nations

14. What kind of data do we use in research on well-being?

15. The types of sources British Household Panel Study (BHPS) German Socioeconomic Panel Australian HILDA Panel General Social Survey of the USA Eurobarometer Surveys Labour Force Survey from the UK World Values Surveys NCDS 1958 cohort

16. Various statistical methods

17. Some cheery news:

18. In Western nations, most people seem happy with their lives

19. The distribution of life-satisfaction levels among British people Source: BHPS, 1997-2003. N = 74,481

20. But obviously life is a mixture of ups and downs

21. Statistically, wellbeing in panels is strongly correlated with life events..good and bad.

22. Big effects Unemployment Divorce Marriage Bereavement Friendship networks Health [No effects from children]

23. Happiness is also U-shaped over the life course

24. The pattern of a typical person’s happiness through life

25. This holds in various settings

26. For example, we see the same age pattern in mental health among a recent sample of 800,000 UK citizens: [Blanchflower and Oswald, Social Science & Medicine, 2008]

27. The probability of depression by age Males, LFS data set 2004-2006 -0.01 -0.005 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 19381942194619501954195819621966197019741978198219861990 Year of birth Regression coefficient

28. -0.014 -0.012 -0.01 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0 0.002 1942194619501954195819621966197019741978198219861990 Depression by age among females: LFS data 2004-2006Q2 Year of birth Regression coefficient

29. Now what about money?

30. The data show that richer people are happier and healthier.

31. For example Di Tella et al REStats 2003 and Luttmer QJE 2005 show income is monotonic in happiness equations for 11 industrial countries.

32. But is there really good causal evidence? One recent attempt (Gardner-Oswald, Journal of Health Economics 2007):

33. Studying windfalls is one approach:-.

34. So what happens to someone who gets a largish lottery win?

35. Remarkably There is no immediate effect on well-being as measured by happiness or financial satisfaction.

36. In our data Strikingly, even the person who receives the equivalent of 1 million US dollars reports a fall, in time t1, in financial satisfaction (ie. satisfaction with the household’s income).

37. But, after three years, a large effect on satisfaction suddenly becomes apparent.

38. Making sense of it all

39. Lottery wins raise mental well-being

40. But the puzzle remains

41. There is a delay. The longitudinal lottery work finds the effect of a win takes one to two years to show up in mental well-being scores.

42. Where will research head in the future?

43. An interesting border is between happiness and medicine Is it possible that we can find physiological correlates with human well-being? Perhaps to broaden the standard policy goal of GDP?

44. Some of our latest work: Statistical links between the heart and income and happiness.

45. To clinicians High blood pressure is potentially a sign of mental strain and low well-being

46. Some regression evidence

47. When we estimate a life-satisfaction equation LS = f (high blood pressure, control variables) Hypertension enters negatively in a 10,000 sample from NCDS cohort and a 15,000 sample from Eurobarometers

48. But how about high blood pressure as a national measure of well-being?

49. Across nations, hypertension and happiness are inversely correlated (Blanchflower and Oswald, forthcoming, Journal of Health Economics)

50. Some of our latest work:

51. It is known that heart rate rises under stress.

52. Pulse and Money We find that for every extra £30,000 a year, heart rate is 1 beat a minute slower.

53. We draw a random sample of 80,000 British individuals, and study their resting heart rates.

54. Heart-Rate Equations

55. Status and happiness may be protective. Success may increase lifespan.

56. Two Studies of ‘Winners’

57. #1 Redelmeier and Singh, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2001 Oscar winners live 4 years longer than those merely nominated.

58. Two Studies of ‘Winners’ #2 Rablen and Oswald Nobel scientists live 1.6 years longer than those merely nominated.

59. We took data on

60. All science Nobellists and all nominees between 1901 and 1850. Two kinds of test: (i)Matching test (ii)Hazard models with time-varying covariates

61. We also looked for effects of income from the Nobel Prize

62. 1-2 extra years There does seem a longevity difference between winners and mere nominees. [No income effect] Even with the corrections for immortal time bias that we attempted.

63. So there is much to be understood about the mind-health links.

64. Some speculations to end:

65. #1 In the next century, new measures of human well-being will probably be required.

66. #2 As social scientists, we need to understand better the connections between mental and physical health.

67. #3 Heart-rate and blood pressure data have particular potential.

68. #4 Social scientists will, I believe, collaborate more with doctors and epidemiologists.

69. Happiness, Lottery Winners, and Your Heart Andrew Oswald Warwick University Papers downloadable at www.andrewoswald.com * Much of this work is joint with coauthor Nick Powdthavee. I also owe a great debt to the work of David G Blanchflower, Andrew Clark, Paul Frijters, and Justin Wolfers.