Kelsey J. O'Connor

I am a Senior Researcher in the Economics of Well-Being at STATEC Research, the research division of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. 

My goal is to contribute research leading ultimately to a redefinition of success in national discourse, thereby supporting systems, both public and private, to promote subjective well-being. The foundations for this research came from studying with Richard Easterlin and Jeffrey Nugent at the University of Southern California (USC). Professor Easterlin also connected me with Gallup, the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, and eminent researchers. I have been very fortunate. 

I work closely with happiness, quality of life, or well-being organizations. I serve as Associate Editor (economics) for the Journal of Happiness Studies, Co-Vice President of Professional Affairs and Board of Directors Member for the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), and as Advisory Group member for the Centre for Urban Wellbeing (University of Birmingham). I am a member of the World Wellbeing Panel, and the Berlin Network of Research on Well-being, and in 2021, I received the Young Scholar Award from ISQOLS. 

I am also a Research Fellow with the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), and Global Labor Organization (GLO).

About the Economics of Happiness (Subjective Well-Being)

The economics of happiness is becoming an increasingly important area of research. Official statistics are recorded by a growing number of countries and organizations (including the United States and OECD), and at least six Nobel Prize winners in economics have advocated obtaining subjective measures of well-being. 

We need to know how people feel about their lives to understand how we are doing as a society. Take women for example, a host of objective indicators suggest women's lives are improving, while in contrast, they have reported declining levels of happiness since the 1970s (in the U.S.). Such disparate findings highlight the need for further research on the causes of well-being, both objective and subjective.

The default measure of progress has become GDP per capita. However, GDP per capita was never intended for this purpose, and current politicians and academics recognize its shortcomings.

Robert Kennedy (1968)

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” 

Subjective well-being data are based on the responses to survey questions concerning one’s well-being or happiness. Responses to such questions have been shown to provide consistent and meaningful measures of well-being (i.e. they are reliable and valid). They: show a high degree of correlation for the same person over a short period time, are well explained by life circumstances, predict future behavior, and correlate well with other subjective and objective measures of well-being.

See also, An Economist’s Lessons of Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science, a short book modeled on Richard Easterlin’s undergraduate course on happiness economics.

Or the Wellbeing Reading List, collated by the World Wellbeing Panel.