Life is more satisfying when evaluated as a whole: A principal component analysis of Mexicans' subjective well-being

IF 1.7 Q2 GEOGRAPHY
Flor Martínez-Sermeño , Powell Sheagren , Rafael Garduño-Rivera
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Abstract

For decades, there has been consensus that measures of well-being must move past readily available economic data, and newer measurements of well-being are often obtained through individual questions or questionnaires. Despite being more accessible to compare person to person, recent trends have shown that the former singular global evaluations are held back by their propensity to be heavily influenced by the most current, essential, or frequent event in a person's life, ignoring other aspects of life and differentiating what the survey is recording per respondent. Questionnaires, however, present a secondary problem of creating the exact comparability of individual questions. Most methods are laboriously hand-made or questionnaire-specific, which takes more work on a survey level. The present study proposes using a principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm to index subjective well-being from multidimensional data. This comprehensive model, which considers 30 variables related to different aspects of well-being, offers a robust and holistic approach to well-being evaluation. To prove the validity of this method, we use data from the 2021 BIARE Mexican subjective well-being survey. This approach allows us to explore the importance of the different aspects of happiness that could be useful for policy interventions to maintain and improve Mexican well-being. The results of our study show that the global evaluation of life satisfaction was generally higher than the Happiness Index, suggesting that life is more satisfying when evaluated globally as the aggregated satisfaction or feeling of each aspect of life. These findings hold promise for the development of effective policy interventions to enhance well-being in Mexico and beyond.
当作为一个整体来评估时,生活更令人满意:墨西哥人主观幸福感的主成分分析
几十年来,人们一致认为,衡量幸福的标准必须超越现成的经济数据,而衡量幸福的新标准往往是通过个别问题或问卷来获得的。尽管更容易进行人与人之间的比较,但最近的趋势表明,前一种单一的全球评估受到一个人生活中最重要、最重要或最频繁的事件的严重影响,忽视了生活的其他方面,并区分了调查所记录的每个受访者。然而,问卷调查还存在一个次要问题,即使各个问题具有精确的可比性。大多数方法都是手工制作或针对特定问卷,这在调查层面上需要更多的工作。本研究提出利用主成分分析(PCA)算法从多维数据中提取主观幸福感指数。这个综合模型考虑了与幸福的不同方面相关的30个变量,为幸福评估提供了一个强大而全面的方法。为了证明该方法的有效性,我们使用了2021年BIARE墨西哥主观幸福感调查的数据。这种方法使我们能够探索幸福的不同方面的重要性,这些方面可能有助于政策干预,以维持和改善墨西哥人的福祉。我们的研究结果表明,生活满意度的整体评价通常高于幸福指数,这表明,当整体评价为生活各个方面的总体满意度或感觉时,生活更令人满意。这些发现为制定有效的政策干预措施以提高墨西哥及其他地区的福祉带来了希望。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.60
自引率
5.90%
发文量
92
期刊介绍: Regional Science Policy & Practice (RSPP) is the official policy and practitioner orientated journal of the Regional Science Association International. It is an international journal that publishes high quality papers in applied regional science that explore policy and practice issues in regional and local development. It welcomes papers from a range of academic disciplines and practitioners including planning, public policy, geography, economics and environmental science and related fields. Papers should address the interface between academic debates and policy development and application. RSPP provides an opportunity for academics and policy makers to develop a dialogue to identify and explore many of the challenges facing local and regional economies.
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