Time Use and Subjective Well-Being in France and the U.S.

Social scientists and policymakers have long been interested in comparing the subjectivewell-being (SWB) of populations over time and across countries, although SWB is hard todefine and measure. Nevertheless, attempts have been made to rank countries based onSWB (e.g., Veenhoven 1996; OECD 2005). Cross-country data have also been used tostudy the effect on SWB of public policies, economic conditions and institutions (e.g.,Alesina et al. 2002; Frey and Stutzer 2002; Blanchflower 2007). The most commonmeasure of SWB in these studies is based on a question that asks respondents about theiroverall level of life satisfaction or happiness. Other measures of SWB include ecologicalmomentary assessment (EMA; Stone et al. 1999) and the day reconstruction method(DRM; Kahneman et al. 2004). These measures collect individuals’ time use and affectiveexperience over time, either using real-time data collection or diary recall methods. Anadvantage of such time-based SWB data is that they connect individuals’ reported SWB toactual events that occurred in their lives, but these measures have not been used previouslyin cross-country studies.