Working Paper: NBER ID: w14637
Authors: Angus Deaton; Jane Fortson; Robert Tortora
Abstract: We use data from the Gallup World Poll and from the Demographic and Health Surveys to investigate how subjective wellbeing (SWB) is affected by mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, including mortality from HIV/AIDS. The Gallup data provide direct evidence on Africans' own emotional and evaluative responses to high levels of infection and of mortality. By comparing the effect of mortality on SWB with the effect of income on SWB, we can attach monetary values to mortality to illuminate the often controversial question of how to value life in Africa. Large fractions of the respondents in the World Poll report the mortality of an immediate family member in the last twelve months, with malaria typically more important than AIDS, and deaths of women in childbirth more important than deaths from AIDS in many countries. A life evaluation measure (Cantril's ladder of life) is relatively insensitive to the deaths of immediate family, which suggests a low value of life. There are much larger effects on experiential measures, such as sadness and depression, which suggest much larger values of life. It is not clear whether either of these results is correct, yet our results demonstrate that experiential and evaluative measures are not the same thing, and that they cannot be used interchangeably as measures of "happiness" in welfare economics.
Keywords: subjective wellbeing; HIV/AIDS; mortality; sub-Saharan Africa
JEL Codes: I12; J17; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| mortality (I12) | subjective wellbeing (SWB) (I31) |
| death of immediate family member (J17) | sadness and depression (I32) |
| death of immediate family member (J17) | life evaluation measure (Cantril ladder) (I31) |
| mortality from HIV/AIDS (I12) | life evaluation measure (Cantril ladder) (I31) |
| mortality from tuberculosis and malaria (I12) | sadness and depression (I32) |
| income (E25) | life evaluation measure (Cantril ladder) (I31) |