Natali Luisa, Handa Sudhanshu, Peterman Amber, Seidenfeld David, Tembo Gelson
Social and Economic Policy Unit, UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, 12, 50121 Florence, Italy.
Department of Public Policy and Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
SSM Popul Health. 2018 Feb 6;4:225-235. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.02.002. eCollection 2018 Apr.
The relationship between happiness and income has been at the center of a vibrant debate, with both intrinsic and instrumental importance, as emotional states are an important determinant of health and social behavior. We investigate whether a government-run unconditional cash transfer paid directly to women in poor households had an impact on self-reported happiness. The evaluation was designed as a cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural Zambia across 90 communities. The program led to a 7.5 to 10 percentage point impact on women's happiness after 36- and 48-months, respectively (or 0.19-0.25 standard deviations over the control group mean). In addition, women have higher overall satisfaction regarding their young children's well-being, including indicators of satisfaction with their children's health and positive outlook on their children's future. Complementary analysis suggests that self-assessed relative poverty (as measured by comparison to other households in the community) is a more important mediator of program effects on happiness than absolute poverty (as measured by household consumption expenditures). Although typically not the focus of such evaluations, impacts on psychosocial indicators, including happiness, should not be discounted as important outcomes, as they capture different, non-material, holistic aspects of an individual's overall level of well-being.
幸福与收入之间的关系一直是一场激烈辩论的核心，它兼具内在重要性和工具性重要性，因为情绪状态是健康和社会行为的重要决定因素。我们调查了一项直接向贫困家庭中的女性发放的政府无条件现金转移计划是否对自我报告的幸福感产生了影响。该评估被设计为在赞比亚农村地区90个社区进行的整群随机对照试验。该计划分别在36个月和48个月后对女性的幸福感产生了7.5至10个百分点的影响（相对于对照组均值而言，为0.19至0.25个标准差）。此外，女性对其幼儿幸福状况的总体满意度更高，包括对孩子健康状况的满意度以及对孩子未来的积极展望等指标。补充分析表明，自我评估的相对贫困（通过与社区内其他家庭比较来衡量）比绝对贫困（通过家庭消费支出衡量）更能成为该计划影响幸福感的重要调节因素。尽管这类评估通常不关注对包括幸福感在内的心理社会指标的影响，但这些影响不应被视为不重要的结果而被忽视，因为它们反映了个人总体幸福感中不同的、非物质的、整体的方面。
