The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing / Sebastian Galiani, Paul J. Gertler, Raimundo Undurraga.

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Galiani, Sebastian

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w21098.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

I31 - General Welfare, Well-Being

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Abstract: Subjective well-being may not improve in step with increases in material well-being due to hedonic adaptation, a psychological process that attenuates the long-term emotional impact of a favorable or unfavorable change in circumstances, such that people's happiness eventually returns to a stable reference level. We use a multi-country field experiment to examine the impact of the provision of improved housing to extremely poor populations on subjective measures of well-being to test whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation when their basic housing needs are met. After sixteen months, we find that subjective perceptions of well-being improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight additional months, 60% of that gain disappears.

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April 2015.

Subjective well-being may not improve in step with increases in material well-being due to hedonic adaptation, a psychological process that attenuates the long-term emotional impact of a favorable or unfavorable change in circumstances, such that people's happiness eventually returns to a stable reference level. We use a multi-country field experiment to examine the impact of the provision of improved housing to extremely poor populations on subjective measures of well-being to test whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation when their basic housing needs are met. After sixteen months, we find that subjective perceptions of well-being improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight additional months, 60% of that gain disappears.