Does Daily Sunshine make you Happy? Subjective Measures of Well-being and the Weather

Buscha, F. 2016. Does Daily Sunshine make you Happy? Subjective Measures of Well-being and the Weather. The Manchester School. 84 (5), pp. 642-663. https://doi.org/10.1111/manc.12126

TitleDoes Daily Sunshine make you Happy? Subjective Measures of Well-being and the Weather
TypeJournal article
AuthorsBuscha, F.
Abstract

This paper examines to what extent individual measures of well-being are correlated with daily weather patterns in the United Kingdom. Merging daily weather data with data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) allows us to test whether measures of well-being are correlated with temperature, sunshine, rainfall and wind speed. We are able to make a strong case for causality due to ‘randomness’ of weather in addition to using regression methods that eliminate time-invariant individual level heterogeneity. Results suggest that some weather parameters (such as sunshine) are correlated with some measures of well-being (job satisfaction); however, in general the effect of weather on subjective measures of well-being is very small.

Keywordsweather, sunshine, happiness, satisfaction, well-being, BHPS
JournalThe Manchester School
Journal citation84 (5), pp. 642-663
ISSN1467-9957
Year2016
PublisherWiley
Accepted author manuscript
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/manc.12126
Publication dates
Published in printSep 2016
Published22 Sep 2015
Funder.No external funding

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