Feeling Good Is Feeling Better.

Can people remember their past happiness? We analyzed data from four longitudinal surveys from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany spanning from the 1970s until the present, in which more than 60,000 adults were asked questions about their current and past life satisfaction. We uncovered systematic biases in recalled happiness: On average, people tended to overstate the improvement in their well-being over time and to understate their past happiness. But this aggregate figure hides a deep asymmetry: Whereas happy people recall the evolution of their life to be better than it was, unhappy ones tend to exaggerate their life's negative evolution. It thus seems that feeling happy today implies feeling better than yesterday. This recall structure has implications for motivated memory and learning and could explain why happy people are more optimistic, perceive risks to be lower, and are more open to new experiences.

Retirement and Unexpected Health Shocks.

Is retirement good for your health? We complement previous studies by exploring the effect of retirement on unexpected health evolution. Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001-2014), we construct measures of the mismatch between individual expected and actual health evolution (hereafter "health shocks"). In our approach, reverse causation running from health shocks to retirement is highly unlikely, because we look at shocks that happen after retirement, and those shocks are, by definition, unanticipated. We find that retirement decreases the probability of negative shocks (by approximately 16% to 24% for men and 14% to 23% for women) while increasing the likelihood of positive shocks (by 9% to 14% for men and 10% to 13% for women). This result is robust to the use of different lead-lag structures and of alternative measures of health change. Our findings are thus consistent with a positive impact of retirement on health.

Well-being through the lens of the internet.

We build models to estimate well-being in the United States based on changes in the volume of internet searches for different words, obtained from the Google Trends website. The estimated well-being series are weighted combinations of word groups that are endogenously identified to fit the weekly subjective well-being measures collected by Gallup Analytics for the United States or the biannual measures for the 50 states. Our approach combines theoretical underpinnings and statistical analysis, and the model we construct successfully estimates the out-of-sample evolution of most subjective well-being measures at a one-year horizon. Our analysis suggests that internet search data can be a complement to traditional survey data to measure and analyze the well-being of a population at high frequency and local geographic levels. We highlight some factors that are important for well-being, as we find that internet searches associated with job search, civic participation, and healthy habits consistently predict well-being across several models, datasets and use cases during the period studied.

Correction: Well-being through the lens of the internet.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209562.].

The impact of institution use on the wellbeing of Alzheimer's disease patients and their caregivers.

In France, temporary institutionalization solutions for dependent elders have been encouraged since the early 2000s. They are targeting patients who are maintained at home, but may need temporary solutions to adjust the constraints of caregivers, e.g. to facilitate transitions between several informal care providers or to allow informal caregivers to leave for holidays. However, the influence of these solutions on dependent elders and their caregivers has not been explored yet. We use French longitudinal data (REAL.FR, 686 elders and their primary caregivers followed between 2000 and 2006) to explore the impact of institution placement on the wellbeing of both Alzheimer's disease patients and their primary informal caregivers. The data distinguishes permanent placements in institution from temporary stays. Using fixed-effect models, we quantify the change in patients' quality of life and caregivers' burden of care following the placement of patients. We find that permanent and temporary stays are associated with a decrease in informal caregivers' burden. However, only permanent stays lead to an improvement of patients' quality of life. Hence, taken together, the results suggest that while long-run placements may maximize the wellbeing of all the members of a household (patient and caregiver), this is not necessarily the case of short-term placements.

Happy People Have Children: Choice and Self-Selection into Parenthood.

There is mixed evidence in the existing literature on whether children are associated with greater subjective well-being, with the correlation depending on which countries and populations are considered. We here provide a systematic analysis of this question based on three different datasets: two cross-national and one national panel. We show that the association between children and subjective well-being is positive only in developed countries, and for those who become parents after the age of 30 and who have higher income. We also provide evidence of a positive selection into parenthood, whereby happier individuals are more likely to have children.

Economic Growth Evens Out Happiness: Evidence from Six Surveys.

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has fallen in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the "very unhappy" and the "perfectly happy". Lower happiness inequality is found both between and within countries, and between and within individuals. Our cross-country regression results argue that the extension of various public goods helps to explain this greater happiness homogeneity. This new stylised fact arguably comes as a bonus to the Easterlin paradox, offering a somewhat brighter perspective for developing countries.