Citation
Graham, Carol (2003). Happiness and hardship: lessons from panel data on mobility and subjective well-being in Peru and Russia.Abstract
This paper summarizes a much longer body of published research on income mobility, subjective well being, and the linkages between the two. It is anattempt to draw out the broader lessons–as well as the challenges–that the experience provides for longitudinal research on poverty. The research is based on two themes. The first is that an informed discussion of the
implications of inequality must focus on the dynamics of inequality as well as on the distribution of income at a particular point in time. The analysis of income mobility, for example, helps capture the distribution of opportunities within societies and across generations.
The second theme is that the distributions of both income and opportunity have significant effects on individual’s perceptions of their well being, and that those perceptions in turn affect the economic and political choices that individuals make. Both of these themes are particularly relevant to the current developing country context, in which many governments are introducing market reforms and/or political liberalization while also contending with high levels of poverty and inequality. Not surprisingly, our exploration of these themes required new and new kinds of data.