Notes from talk by Dr. Betsey Stevenson.

I attended a talk by Dr. Betsey Stevenson, about her research on the effects of income on happiness, and on the declining happiness among women. She also gave a brief talk about how she got where she is, and about grad school. below are my notes.

Do not choose grad school based on one person. All good people have one eye on the door. Harvard: policy oriented, how do public policies change people’s life? Gender, family issues. Divorce laws change incentives for domestic violence? For people to invest in marriage? How does the setup for legal contract of marriage change marriage/divorce?

Title 9: couldn’t treat men/women differently in education, crafted by crafty female legislators. It applied to sports, even though it wasn’t stated. Passed in 1972. Spent the next 6 years fighting over whether it applied to sports. 1975: passed that it applies to sports, including football. So how did that change sports? Boys sports grew most in states that expanded girls sports the most. Gap between girl/boy play sports predicted by opinion about public issues: abortion, women in politics. People believing in rights/equality à more sports playing equality.

What makes people well off? What does increased well being mean? Don’t ask people, look at their actions, their revealed preference. Maybe there’re things other than purchases? People make mistakes in their actions. People have tendencies to make the same mistakes. Underestimate high probability, overestimate low probability events. In addition, there should be no difference to you whether you have opt in/opt out of organ donation for the sticker, so behavioral bias. People save a lot more w/ opt out than opt in savings plan.

Best example: Harvard/MIT paper. Are people better off by increasing cigarette taxes? Make people worse off because revealed preference, they want to smoke. So we could make people better off by pricing people out of cigarettes. Patronizing? People don’t know what’s good for them, make them better off by intervening in their behavior. Think about it as externality of the self now against the self in the future. So tax the now self. If government going to have these policies, how do we evaluate them? Can’t use subjective data.

Got involved in happiness research by reviewing a lot of papers that used subjective well being data. Lots of papers found that women were made worse off by policies for equalities. Took step back, showed that there’s an overall trend in declining female happiness. Looking before and after intervention doesn’t tell you much about your change because everything else not held constant. Took advantage in state variation in title 9 binding. So 50 time series experiments.

How can we trust subjective well being data? There’s no good in sending money to poor people in Africa, skeptical of lack of trend between national income and happiness. Easterlin found statistically insignificant results, not no relationship between subjective well being and GDP. Looked at bigger sample size, gallup world poll, found different coefficient for GDP. None of the old data sets could reject 0 or the coefficient we found. Showed importance of careful research.

US census, discovered coding error in disclosure technique, messed a bunch of people up. Saw that at age 65, there was a 25% reduction in marriage. Turns out swapped ages w/ 85 year olds. Looked at age ratios in public version, there are more men than women in late 60s, early 70s. looked at official population counts, there are more women than men.

In world value survey, done in waves. Ex. 80-84. To get average of the country, which years GDP compare to? Look at survey, tells which year in field. For most of the countries observed, the GDP doesn’t change much from year to year. Becomes harder to figure out GDP for countries like Iraq. Their results don't change much if include all the countries

Rise in married men/women’s happiness, but men rise more than women. Marriage makes people happier, or happy people much more likely to get married in next year. People who are first asked about their marital happiness answer higher to question about their actual happiness. GSS was very clever and did split sample: ½ people got it the new way and ½ the old way.

Subjective well being and income.

1974: Easterlin, launched econ research into use of life satisfaction research. Looked at econ growth and subjective well being. Happiness, life satisfaction, satisfaction ladder. Idea of what the best possible and worst possible life doesn't vary much across the world. These questions ask you to evaluate your life, not how happy you are at the moment. These evaluative measures correlate well w/ GDP per capita. Subjective well being correlated w/ brain scans, genuine smiles, so good measure of actual happiness.

Behavioral bias may make revealed preference a bad indicator of well being. Smoking. Can be difficult to elicit people’s valuation of public goods. Evaluate well being before and after policy change, like putting in public parks. As policy maker, should my only goal be to maximize happiness? People who have children are less happy. That means we shouldn’t have children?

How is subjective well being related to overall happiness? To GDP per capita? Money associated w/ subjective well being?

Easterlin: getting more money isn’t going to make people happier except as a function of increasing social rank. People who work on subjective well being people were leftists, didn’t like the idea that giving money to poor wouldn’t make them better off. 1990s view: belief that it helps absolutely in poorest countries because richer countries satiated. Income satiation romantic wonderful idea.

Since rich people are happier than poor people, and rich countries are equally happy as poor countries, then only relative dependence pressures matters. Policy implications: when people work, they’re only improving their social rank so imposing cost on other people, so wealthy people should be taxed for their externality.

New view: Gallup World poll shows GDP per capita and average happiness across countries highly correlated; income matters for subjective well being beyond changing social rank. Absolute income matters in addition to relative income.

	Stylized:	Stevenson/wolfers
Within countries:	big effects	Big effects
Between country:	small effects	Big effects
National time series:	no effects	Big effects
International panel: fast vs strong growth:	no effects.	Big effects

Different studies measured happiness on 4 point, 10 point, and 11 point questions: Create cardinal measure. Ordered probit: think of mean as 0 all countries. All 35 years of GSS data, average happiness for given year, given category.

Real family income for one year: no correlation w/ happiness because not representative of lifetime income. In top 25 countries, household income correlates w/ happiness.

Easterlin: compared USA, Canada, and France.

Stevenson and Wolfers: look at gallup world poll. Ask people questions about their lives, in a consistent way. Across countries, See slope of 0.4 when income on log scales.

1% increase in GDP has 3x larger effect in rich countries, but $1 rise has 3x larger effect in Jamaica, 20x larger in Burundi than USA.

National time series data:

Japan. Life in Nation survey. Easterlin showed that Japanese didn't get much happier postwar. Most other countries doesn't get wealthier that fast. Stevenson looked at codebook: none of the western researchers spoke Japanese, or looked at codebook. Found that the questions changed dramatically. Started by asking “how happy is your life at home?” before 1964, the happiest you could be is “although I’m not innumerably satisfied, I’m generally satisfied w/ my life now” after, it became “I am completely satisfied w/ my life right now” when completely satisfied, 20%-->4% picked top box. Break into periods of time when questions consistent.

China: changed sample population from 100% Beijing university students to 80% rural population. In India, only surveyed in Hindi until 2004, only 40% speak Hindi, nonspeakers different from speakers.

In United states, happiness trends flat, somewhat declining. We don’t really know why. If we break apart, women become slightly less happy, men happier. Difference between Log (average income) and average (log income). US is puzzle for why women have become less happy absolutely and relative to men. Also in Europe relative to men, but not absolutely. European men happier, but women equally happy.

Movement towards evaluating people’s mood during day: people dislike commuting.

People higher income happier because they in place to be treated w/ respect. Wealthier because buy better food, so happier.

Women haven’t all become less happy, but they’ve all become less happy relative to men, no matter how you cut data. Teenage girls less happy relative to teenage boys.

Capability approach: measure economic endpoints. Best measure of capabilities is income. People make choices to live best life they can when they have capabilities.

Difficult to know how much permanent income: theory isn’t that happiness is function of lifetime income so if people are consumption smoothing, current income shouldn’t matter. Look at cross section: permanent income and transient income. All college students poor, day you get a job you’re not going to become much happier. Wish had way to measure permanent income. Actually want to measure earnings capability. Research doesn’t say that choosing highest paying job makes you happiest. People who earn more on average, have greater abilities on average. If you and best friend have equal abilities, and one chooses B school and other chooses to represent domestic abuse victims, she could be more happy. She consumes more leisure, consumes more fulfilling job. She wouldn’t be happier if she went to a big law firm and earned more. Could be that their current income is insufficient to measure lifetime potential income. Particularly this year, people will say no, but next year maybe they will say yes. Fluctuates w/ business cycle.

If I can consumption smooth, can I happiness smooth? If people can income smooth, then happiness smooth. Right now lot of uncertainty, so less good at predicting earnings. People who get unemployed change lifetime earnings trajectory. Permanent hit to happiness. People feel stress of bad economy.

Response to After Credentials

This is a response to After Credentials by Paul Graham

“Let's think about what credentials are for. What they are, functionally, is a way of predicting performance. If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn't need them.

So why did they even evolve? Why haven't we just been measuring actual performance? Think about where credentialism first appeared: in selecting candidates for large organizations. Individual performance is hard to measure in large organizations, and the harder performance is to measure, the more important it is to predict it.”

Credentials are also important when individual performance can be easily measured, but the metric is not available to the person judging. Credentials are important particularly when there is information asymmetry, such that the judge has much more information than the candidate.

We see this if the judge is buying information or advice, and cannot determine its quality after receiving it. Credentials become even more important if the cost of acting on wrong information or advice is very bad, and there are no second tries.

Doctors are often judged and will continually be judged by their credentials even if the legal privileges of MD and DO were abolished. Many people will prefer doctors who are certified by the relevant board, even though that certification does not guarantee good skills. And I doubt anyone, except maybe the most desperate, would accept advice from a “doctor” who did not possess either an MD or DO.

The reason we visit a doctor is that the doctor possesses information about us that we want, or can do procedure/surgery that we want. The patient has no knowledge about the doctor’s abilities. Anecdotal evidence (even our own) can tell us if he is nice or a jerk, but is weak at predicting his skills because there are few data points.

The other doctors and the nurses that he works with can judge his ability, both because they have access to more data points, and because they are more discerning. And there are larger records of the results of his work, but they do not distinguish poor performance because the doctor wasn’t skilled or because he had difficult cases. None of this information is available to the patient.

The importance of credentials is compounded because the stakes, particularly the possibility of loss, are very high. Choosing an unskilled or poorly trained doctor may yield poor results, so people take the safe route and go with the board certified doctor.

We see the same thing, but to a slightly less degree, when searching for a financial planner. Again, the customer does not have as much information and cannot easily judge the advice given by the planner. Many planners will say that they beat the market, or their clients’ portfolios performed very well, and it is difficult to determine the truly talented from the lucky or the bluffing. This time, though, the stakes are slightly smaller: life savings instead of saving life. As a result, credentials are slightly less (but still very) important.

Jerk

how do I find the right feedback? Getting good feedback is hard, and it’s even harder to know whether to take it. Part of me knows that if I’m not pissing off at least a couple people, I’m doing something wrong. If you tell someone something that they don’t know, and it conflicts with what they believe in, that will cause them to be pissed at you. That’s ok. If I pissed off people by being a jerk, that’s not the right way to do it. I go back and look at my final evaluation from 375, and Dr. K says,

“One suggestion I have for you is that you develop better communication skills. You blame caffeine and lack of sleep (and I’m sure these didn’t help), but sometimes attitudes are contagious and you need to reduce stress on your teammates, not add to it. “

In other words, she’s telling me that my partners think I’m a jerk, and that I don’t do so well in a group. I guess at my age, the whole pretentious jerk thing comes with being smart, and conscious effort must be taken to change that. In the way she’s describing, it seems like being a jerk goes with lacking communication skills. Those ever so important soft skills… communication, leadership, that stuff that’s not taught in class, how does one go about developing it?

Just today, my mom thanked me for putting leaving the toilet seat down after I took a shit. I know that's one kind of feedback, and she's basically telling me that I should do that in the future. But how do I know if that’s legitimate criticism that I need should change, or if she’s trying to make me into a vehicle that eases her own life?

More generally, people will often criticize me because I don’t act in a way that eases their life. Back when I worked in Reading ER, I heard a patient complain/criticize that one of her doctors never answered his phone. But that’s a way that the doctor makes sure he gets his own work done, and doesn’t get interrupted by trifle matters. But easing other people’s life should be secondary goal to getting things, done, and getting things done requires working with other people, which means listening to the criticism about how I don’t do that well.

The other problem is that none of these complaint/criticisms come back to me. I know people trash talk me behind my back, and that almost always, it doesn’t come back to me, and as a result, I don’t know what I’m doing that pisses people off.

When people criticize you, either they are telling you something that you should change to your own benefit, or they want to change you because that change will make their life easier. But the difficult part is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and you can’t always tell based on the person.

So the way to go about this is to gather information, if you can, and then judge the information that you have to see if it has merits.

What did Trevor, Scott, and Sage say about me? What do Allison, Julie, and Emily think of me? What does Sam complain to her friends that I do? Meh. I’m not going to worry about that.

defrosted gourmet food

http://www.slate.com/id/2160284/

Sysco corporation is the largest food distributer to restaurants in the world. they sell large quantities of ingredients including beans and flower, but also sells gourmet food that can be defrosted and then sold immediately to consumers. This way, the cook doesn't have to cook. just defrost.

new york, florence, and pisa.

New York, though designed by many people over long periods of time, looks beautiful because the grid layout of the streets were designed by a few engineers. The efficiency of the grid streets makes it beautiful. By contrast, the old cities like Rome and Florence are beautiful because there are single buildings that have ornate art on them. In New York, nobody builds those old beautiful buildings with gargoyles and flying buttresses on them… instead, they make glass and steel towers, which are ugly but efficient. These towers, combined with the street pattern, makes for a beautiful city. For a building designed by a lot of different people, look at the leaning tower of pisa. Later engineers tried to stabilize the place, and the result is that the building leans, and also curves to try to reduce the leaning. The place was re-designed so many times, even closed for renovation, to try to stabilize the structure. But the result is that the thing is ugly, and no additional pillars or bells or gargoyles can fix that.

Internal medicine

Whenever you talk to a little kid, a lot of them say that they want to be a doctor. Sometimes they get more specific. Many want to be a surgeon, or be a radiologist, or a pediatrician, radiologist, dentist, ophthalmologist, or any other specialty. But you almost never hear a kid say that he wants to be a doctor, and specialize in internal medicine. But more doctors specialize in internal medicine than most other fields.

I need to do more thinking about this, but if anyone has an answer please share with me.

sitting in front of comp.

Well, I'm sitting in front of my comp, bored. I'm supposed to write a papwer about the flood in genesis, but I dont feel like talking about that right now.. It seems like my mind has to be in the groove for me to write or talk or think or anything, and it's just not there right now. I realize this would probably finish up my essay if this were about Genesis right now, but I guess it doesnt work that way... Writing about literature means I have to refer to the book and think over and over, while Here I just let the words flow from my fingers, without first stopping by my brain. it's okay if there are typos because it's not like anyone actually reads this, except for me...

It seems like writing about literature is so pointless. Nobody is actually going to read what I wrtie, and if they do, it's not going to help them. Nothing that I have to say, or that I could ever have to say, is going to be able to help out future writers. On the other hand, If i write about science, maybe one day I'll be able to make a contribution, do something useful that others can build on, and help the general population. I guess writing about writing is like thinking about thinking. Metacognating, or whatever it's called. It's fun for some people, perhaps helps them better understand themself. But in the end, it doesnt get anywhere, anymore than a message board flamebate does. But you cant force people to enjoy something if they really dont like it. that's the problem.

Well, I'm out. Going to try to write that Genesis paper again.