The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing

Autores
Galiani, Sebastián; Gertler, Paul J.; Undurraga, Raimundo
Año de publicación
2015
Idioma
inglés
Tipo de recurso
documento de trabajo
Estado
versión enviada
Descripción
A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.
Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)
Materia
Ciencias Económicas
JEL: I31
bienestar social
pobreza
Happiness, Adaptation, Poverty, Experimental Evidence
Nivel de accesibilidad
acceso abierto
Condiciones de uso
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Repositorio
SEDICI (UNLP)
Institución
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
OAI Identificador
oai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/51281
Acceder
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network_name_str SEDICI (UNLP)
spelling The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in HousingGaliani, SebastiánGertler, Paul J.Undurraga, RaimundoCiencias EconómicasJEL: I31bienestar socialpobrezaHappiness, Adaptation, Poverty, Experimental EvidenceA fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)2015-05info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaperinfo:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersionDocumento de trabajohttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042info:ar-repo/semantics/documentoDeTrabajoapplication/pdfhttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/51281enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/url/http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/download.php?file=archivos_upload/doc_cedlas184.pdfinfo:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/1853-0168info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)reponame:SEDICI (UNLP)instname:Universidad Nacional de La Platainstacron:UNLP2025-11-12T10:29:07Zoai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/51281Institucionalhttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/Universidad públicaNo correspondehttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/oai/snrdalira@sedici.unlp.edu.arArgentinaNo correspondeNo correspondeNo correspondeopendoar:13292025-11-12 10:29:07.532SEDICI (UNLP) - Universidad Nacional de La Platafalse
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
title The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
spellingShingle The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
Galiani, Sebastián
Ciencias Económicas
JEL: I31
bienestar social
pobreza
Happiness, Adaptation, Poverty, Experimental Evidence
title_short The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
title_full The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
title_fullStr The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
title_full_unstemmed The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
title_sort The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Galiani, Sebastián
Gertler, Paul J.
Undurraga, Raimundo
author Galiani, Sebastián
author_facet Galiani, Sebastián
Gertler, Paul J.
Undurraga, Raimundo
author_role author
author2 Gertler, Paul J.
Undurraga, Raimundo
author2_role author
author
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv Ciencias Económicas
JEL: I31
bienestar social
pobreza
Happiness, Adaptation, Poverty, Experimental Evidence
topic Ciencias Económicas
JEL: I31
bienestar social
pobreza
Happiness, Adaptation, Poverty, Experimental Evidence
dc.description.none.fl_txt_mv A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.
Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)
description A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.
publishDate 2015
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2015-05
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dc.language.none.fl_str_mv eng
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dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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