Well-Being and Polarization in United States

This thesis has two-fold objective: one is to study the extent of polarization in well being among U.S. counties, and the other one is to examine the determinants of self-reported happiness in Arizona. In doing so, I first provide an overall view of well being in the United States. Then in the second part, I provide more analysis into factors of well being using survey data from Arizona.

I use U.S. county Per Capita Income (PCI) data (2,992 observations) to study the extent and evaluation of Polarization, Welfare and Poverty over the period 1959-1989. Non parametric and Stochastic Dominance techniques are employed. The methods compare mass relocation by evaluating various degrees of right and left separation between distributions. Results show that regardless of time and method of analysis, well being has improved in all counties. But polarization still exists in spite of improved welfare. I also weight Per Capita Income by the population share for each county. But I did not find a noticeable difference between the weighted and un-weighted results, except for the time periods of 1969 to 1979 and 1959 to 1989. “No decision” results were obtained for these periods of the polarization dependent weighted sample.

Income is an important factor of happiness. But it is not the only factor which contributes to self-satisfaction or happiness. In this thesis, I also used regression analysis to quantify factors which affect the overall self-reported happiness of Arizona farmers. Self-reported happiness is measured by a categorical variable representing overall life satisfaction of individual farmers. An ordered probit model is used to estimate the happiness model econometrically. Results are consistent with our hypothesis that income is not the only factor that makes people happy. Other factors such as, having health insurance, race, planting organic crops, education, and the emotional attachment to their farms are also very important factors identified.

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