Happiness, life satisfaction, and other numerical subjective response scales suffer from arbitrarily large biases when numerically-averse respondents simplify the scale. A new model accounts for the problem and its impact on key estimates of the value of income and education.
Preprint and appendices (PDF). My PDF may be nicer than JPubE's. The Appendix by itself is also available.
Erratum in JPubE version: Appendix equation 21 has an error. "h" is undefined; it should read "z". Sorry.
History on arXiv: 1807.11835

Replication data for this paper are available.

See freewayseverance.org for an interactive interface, made by the first and third authors, to explore the data and results.

This paper uses Tokyo as a case study to explore the processes of urban development and sprawl through the lenses of street connectivity and historical development.

We provide a global estimate of time use by all humans, integrating economic and noneconomic data within a consistent framework. Our findings provide a bird’s eye perspective on what our species does, including how economic activities fit into the backdrop of life, and reveal activities for which there is significant potential for change.

Full manuscript (PDF).
This is a formal publication of the Database of Happiness Coefficients for Canada, browseable and downloadable online. It also describes how such databases should be curated, and how they are to be used by policy makers and practitioners.

This is an adapted version of the SNSS article listed below. SNSS PDF Manuscript PDF Complete book

Categorizing time use can be one fundamental starting point for social science. This paper describes how to do it in a universal way, focused on motivations and on resulting changes to the physical world, which can be applied equally to a hunter-gatherer as to a modern, cell-phone-wielding urbanite.

This is the first chapter in a collection of policy briefs. It provides summaries and synthesis. Complete PDF

Chapter 3 of this year's World Happiness Report surveys trends in the influence of our growing understanding about happiness.

New institutions are needed in order for policy and government budgets to be suitably accountable to experienced human wellbeing. However, mostly the infrastructure is already there, at least in seed form. Care should be taken not to over-extend ambitions for applying this kind of benefit/cost approach to human outcomes. That is, some long-run conservation questions will still need to be decided largely on another basis.

One of the most frequent objections to the use of life satisfaction as a measure of wellbeing is that underprivileged societies might anyway report high life satisfaction. Here, we give evidence of that possibility --- but not as a problem with the measurement!
Work led by Sara Miñarro.

This work evolved from Chapter 5 of the 2020 IPBES Global Assessment.
Transformative change towards sustainable pathways requires more than a simple scaling‐up of sustainability initiatives — it entails addressing these levers and leverage points to change the fabric of legal, political, economic and other social systems. These levers and leverage points build upon those approved within the Global Assessment's Summary for Policymakers, with the aim of enabling leaders in government, business, civil society and academia to spark transformative changes towards a more just and sustainable world.

The pattern of new urban and residential roads represents an essentially permanent backbone that shapes new urban form and land use in the world’s cities. Thus, today’s choices on the connectivity of streets may restrict future resilience and lock in pathways of energy use and CO₂ emissions for a century or more. In contrast to the corrective trend observed in the USA, where streets have become more connected since the late 20th century, we find that most of the world is building ever-more disconnected “street-network sprawl.” A rapid policy response, including regulation and pricing tools, is needed to avoid further costly lock-in during this current, final phase of the urbanization process.

Selected recent public attention:

• Scientific American (2020/02/12)
• New Scientist (2019/12/12)
• CityLab (2020/02)
• Radio Canada (2020/02)
• Archinect (2020/02/11)
• La Presse (2020/01/17)
• CBC's "Let's Go" (2020/01/22)
• Mercury News (2020/02/03)
• Master Geonum (2020/02/25)
• Indiaspend (2020/02/25)
• Axios (2020/03/05)
• Wired (2020/05/31)

We define a new, globally-comparable index of street-network sprawl, and map it for the entire planet. We define a classification of street network types for geographic grid cells. We provide qualitative and quantitative validations for our measures.

What does recent research into the human happiness tell us about life in the future? We use trends that account for differences in happiness across countries and over time to project what life could be like in 2050, in good and bad scenarios. Our findings highlight the critical role of non-material factors such as social supports, freedoms, and fairness in determining the future of human well-being.

2-minute video introducing this work

What pathways and policy intervention scenarios relating to nature, nature’s benefit to people and their contributions to good quality of life can lead to sustainable futures?

Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment

The first high-resolution map of life satisfaction across Canada

Analysis of life satisfaction data in Connecticut from Datahaven's survey.

We provide the first comprehensive assessment of completeness for the world's only global-level, openly licensed source of geospatial road data, OpenStreetMap (OSM). We use two complementary, independent methods to assess the completeness of OSM road data in each country and provide a new estimate of global road length which represents a substantial revision to existing assessments.

With this publication we are also releasing our complete computer code and datasets under open licenses.

PLOS One's PDF

PDF manuscript

My reaction to the ideas of monetary reform, as advocated (for the GTI) by Mary Mellor.

My collected responses to selected reactions, from the GTI community, to my perspective piece. For me, this is as important a piece of writing as the original article. Here I advocate for society to maximise life satisfaction subject to a large set of material constraints. I also address a number of standard objections to reliance on life satisfaction data, as well as to my optimism.

The "inconvenient truths" threatening our future, such as climate change and social polarization, receive justifiable notoriety. But there are also "convenient truths" that provide the basis for hope. This essay explores a win-win for people and planet: the ways that nurturing satisfying lives aligns with the search for environmental sustainability.

The Great Transition Initiative version (PDF).

JEP PDF (free for a while)

PDF manuscript

Our choice of where to lay down local road networks in new residential developments may have long-lasting impacts on climate change. Because these choices are more permanent than nearly any other development decision, and because their impacts on urban form may grow over time, we consider the impacts of changing road network connectivity on transportation greenhouse gas emissions over the coming half century.

Open access PDF and Supplementary information from ERL.

Book chapter PDF (by request) PDF (manuscript)

We provide a new database (MPWB) sampling well-being and progress indicators implemented since the 1970s at all geographic scales. We assess in particular the roles of subjective well-being and of sustainability metrics in the evolution of attempts to better measure progress and the broadest social outcomes.

Springer-Nature's free online version

PDF manuscript

Our full MPWB database of indicators is available under the Creative Commons license.

Two new things are in this paper: we look at likely future renewable energy portfolios with enough geographic resolution to split them up by province. We also provide an intuitive breakdown, by province, of what energy (electricity and other) is currently used for. Bringing these together, we find which provinces could be fully renewably powered.

A series of province-by-province graphics and all other extra material is available online. It includes links to 1-page PDF summaries for all provinces; and individually: BC; AB; SK; MB; ON; QC; NB; NS; PE; NF

Full manuscript published in RSER (PDF)
(An earlier, longer version was released as USAEE Working Paper No. 16-246)

Canada has relatively low urban air pollution, yet we identify strong income-equivalent effects of daily variation in air quality, through the life satisfaction approach.

Published EEPS PDF and the acknowledgements (as a separate erratum).
Our version (PDF), all together.

Subjective well-being (life satisfaction, in particular) is extensively measured in Canada but not for Aboriginal citizens on reserve. Using data from a rare 2003 exception, we find some expected consistencies with other populations, in terms of the relationship between objective life circumstances and subjective reports, and some differences.

IIPJ PDF
Prettier layout PDF

A look at street-network urban sprawl in Canada, including a breakdown by metro area and by municipality of whose streets are worst for trapping people in a lifestyle with car-oriented mobility. I also analyze which the trends in new developments in each city.

PDF

More detailed working paper version: PDF

Local copy of CPP PDF: PDF

The urban street network is one of the most permanent features of cities. Once laid down, the pattern of streets determines urban form and the level of sprawl for decades to come. We present a high-resolution time series of urban sprawl, as measured through street network connectivity, in the United States from 1920 to 2012. We find a major turnaround in newly constructed road-network sprawl in the mid-1990s.

PNAS article with Supporting Information (PDF)
Just the 6-page PNAS article (PDF)

Our open dataset, interactive graphics browser, and video are available online. The open data are registered permanently as DOI:10.5061/dryad.3k502.

Smart Prosperity Institute blog post on the implications of our sprawl research for climate change.

South Korea represents, along with Quebec, a remarkable example of a society which has experienced a significant and steady rise in reported life satisfaction over more than a decade. This chapter uses a detailed panel survey to shed light on who is benefiting and why.

Just Chapter 5 from the book
A nicer version of Chapter 5 (my formatting).
The whole book

English version, "Using measured well-being to understand equality: the case of Québec" (PDF)
En français (PDF)

The preface and conclusion from the book are available.

This is an encyclopedia entry with a focus on relative income effects, which is often now what economists mean when they refer to consumption externalities. Usually "externalities" by itself refers instead to some form of production externality.

PDF

Correlations in survey data from 136 countries are complemented by experiments carried out in Canada, Uganda, and South Africa to suggest that human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending).

A (much older) version (2010) was issued as an NBER working paper.

APA-PDF with appendix

Using 25 years of the Canadian General Social Survey, I examine trends in life satisfaction and economic and social variables and find that Québec has undergone a remarkable upward shift in mean life satisfaction, as compared with the rest of Canada, during this period. The shift is not easy to explain with conventional economic indices.

CPP PDF 27pp
printable PDF 29pp
PDF w/ appendix 165pp

Video animations in English and French are available to show the evolution over time:

Presentation (PDF) from 30 May 2012 "Forum Vers un indicateur officiel du mieux-vivre québécois", Quebec City. An older (2010) version of the paper is available (and includes an analysis of consistency over time of inferences about local communities).

preprint

The NBER version
The same, with appendix attached

PDF

The CJE version
Earlier NBER version
The same, with appendix attached

On Google books
NBER version
The same, with appendix attached
Our VOXeu.org opinion piece on this work.