MEASURING INEQUALITY OF HAPPINESS IN NATIONS In search for.pdf

MEASURING INEQUALITY OF HAPPINESS IN NATIONS In search for proper statistics Wim Kalmijn and Ruut Veenhoven Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies, Special issue on ‘Inequality of Happi- ness in nations’, 2005, vol. 6, pp. 357-396 ABSTRACT Comparative research on happiness typically focuses on the level of happiness in na- tions, which is measured using the mean. There have also been attempts to compare inequality of happiness in nations and this is measured using the standard deviation. There is doubt about the appropriateness of that latter statistic and some prefer to use the statistics currently used to compare income inequality in nations, in particular the Gini coefficient. In this paper, we review the descriptive statistics that can be used to quantify inequality of happiness in nations. This review involves five steps: (1) we con- sider how happiness nations is assessed, (2) next we list the statistics of dispersion and considers their underlying assumptions; (3) we construct hypothetical distributions that cover our notion of inequality; (4) we define criteria of performance and (5) we check how well the step-2 statistics meet the step-4 demands when applied to the step- 3 hypothetical distributions We then applied the best performing statistics to real dis- tributions of happiness in nations. Of the nine statistics considered, five failed this em- pirical test. One of the failed statistics is the Gini coefficient. Its malfunction was fore- seen on theoretical grounds: the Gini coefficient assumes a ratio level of measure- ment, while happiness measures can at best be treated at the interval level. The Gini coefficient has been designed for application to ‘capacity’ variables such as income rather than to ‘intensity’ variables such as happiness. Four statistics prov