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Historical analysis of national subjective wellbeing using millions of digitized books
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Hills, Thomas Trenholm, Proto, Eugenio and Sgroi, Daniel (2019) Historical analysis of national subjective wellbeing using millions of digitized books. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1186). (Unpublished)
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Official URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w...
Abstract
We develop a new way to measure national subjective well-being across the very long run where traditional survey data on well-being is not available. Our method is based on quantitative analysis of digitized text from millions of books published over the past 200 years, long before the widespread availability of consistent survey data. The method uses psychological valence norms for thousands of words in different languages to compute the relative proportion of positive and negative language for four different nations (the USA, UK, Germany and Italy). We validate our measure against existing survey data from the 1970s onwards (when such data became available) showing that our measure is highly correlated with surveyed life satisfaction. We also validate our measure against historical trends in longevity and GDP (showing a positive relationship) and conflict (showing a negative relationship). Our measure allows a first look at changes in subjective well-being over the past two centuries, for instance highlighting the dramatic fall in well-being during the two World Wars and rise in relation to longevity.
| Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Well-being, Big data, Gross domestic product | ||||||
| Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||||
| Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||||
| Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0083-7350 | ||||||
| Official Date: | January 2019 | ||||||
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| Number: | 1186 | ||||||
| Number of Pages: | 18 | ||||||
| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||||
| Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | ||||||
| Description: | This paper also appears as CAGE Discussion paper 236 |
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| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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