Lost in Transition: Life Satisfaction on the Road to Capitalism

By Richard A. Easterlin. Social Science Research Network, 2009

273 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe life satisfaction has followed the V-shaped pattern of GDP but failed to recover commensurately. In general, increased satisfaction with material living levels has occurred at the expense of decreased satisfaction with work, health, and family life. Disparities in life satisfaction have increased markedly with those hardest hit being the less educated and persons over age 30; women and men have suffered about equally. The asymmetric response of life satisfaction to decreases in GDP in transition countries and increases in GDP in non-transition countries is arguably due to loss aversion.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d49ea2c58991d17d889e53efaa0f55581599a3ed

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Health

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Rural–Urban Divide in China: Income but Not Happiness? (2010, background): “It is notable that Easterlin (2008), in a study of 13 European transition economies, concluded that the failure of life satisfaction to recover commensurately with the economic recovery that took place after the initial economic collapse was due to the adverse changes in society that accompanied…”
Happy to Help? Exploring the Factors Associated with Variations in Rates of Volunteering Across Europe (2010, background): “Easterlin found that in 2005 subjective well-being in these countries finally returned to the levels measured in the early 1990s (Easterlin, 2008).”
Life (Dis)Satisfaction and the Intention to Migrate: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe (2014, methodology): “According to the World Values Survey and previous research, for instance, Blanchflower & Freeman [7], Hayo [36], Guriev & Zhuravskaya [34] and Easterlin [25], people from transition countries, including CEE, report lower levels of life satisfaction.”
Happiness and Economic Growth: The Evidence (2013, unknown): “…relationship between subjective well-being and economic growth, drawing on research carried on at the University of Southern California over the last decade (see Easterlin 2005a, Easterlin and Plagnol 2008, Easterlin 2009, Easterlin et al. 2010, Easterlin and Sawangfa 2010, Easterlin et al. 2012).”
The Happiness Gap in Eastern Europe (2016, unknown): “6Similarly, Easterlin (2009) argues that loss aversion is important: stagnating labour market conditions and a deteriorating social safety net are responsible for the lack of recovery in life satisfaction in the transition region.”
Does Economic Growth Raise Happiness in China? (2011, background): “Is China's experience common among transition economies? Easterlin ( 2008 ) examined happiness scores in 13 ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe.”
The Wellbeing–Consumption paradox: Happiness, health, income, and carbon emissions in growing versus non-growing economies (2019, background): “Easterlin (2009) 112 and De Neve et al. (2017) provide the only two analyses at the national level, as far as we are aware.”
When Does Economic Growth Improve Life Satisfaction? Multilevel Analysis of the Roles of Social Trust and Income Inequality in 46 Countries, 1981–2012 (2017, methodology): “Also this result is consistent with previous literature documenting that transition countries are an exception to the Easterlin paradox (Easterlin, 2009; Bartolini et al., 2015).”
Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects (2009, background): “Men are slightly happier than women, a frequent observation in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America, as opposed to Western Europe and the United States (Graham and Pettinato, 2002; Guriev and Zhuravskaya, 2007; Easterlin, 2008; Grosfeld and Senik, 2008, Caporale et al., forthcoming).”