highest category declined from 18.3 percent to 4.4 percent. The second category from the top also became more
demanding, changing from “Although I can’t say that I am satisfied, if life continues in this way, it will be okay,” to
“Although I can’t say I am completely satisfied, I am satisfied.” In parallel, the bottom category changed from “Life now
is very unbearable” to “Completely dissatisfied,” but the proportion choosing this lowest category changed little. Second,
the questions asked from 1958 to 1969 focused on feelings about “life at home,” whereas the focus of the relevant
question from 1970 onward was on global life satisfaction. Third, the survey question—and the allowable responses—
changed again in 1992.
Properly viewed, this leaves us with four periods within which we can make useful assessments of trends in
subjective well-being in Japan. A cursory inspection of Table 5 suggests an upward trend in well-being in 1958-63,
continuing when a new question was asked for the 1964-69 period, followed by a slower rise from 1970 to 1991. This
roughly parallels the path of Japanese GDP through these periods. From 1992 until 2007, life satisfaction fell, but this
coincides with the end of the Japanese growth miracle and indeed the onset of an economic slump. All told, these findings
suggest that subjective well-being in Japan has largely risen with GDP per capita, and that it rose most sharply during the
period of rapid growth.
Having established that these data appear qualitatively consistent with a positive satisfaction-GDP gradient, we
now turn to a quantitative assessment of the magnitude of this link. One simple approach involves treating these data as
four separate datasets and following our earlier style of analysis. Thus, within each continuous subseries we create a time
series of average well-being by performing an ordered probit of subjective well-being on time fixed effects.33 By
construction, the levels of these four series are not comparable, and hence comparisons within, but not between, series are
valid. Figure 18 shows the home/life satisfaction-GDP gradient within each of these periods, and it is clear that throughout
the period in which Japan moved from poor to affluent (the first three panels), subjective well-being rose with GDP per
capita. The far right panel shows that since 1992 the Japanese economy has shown very little growth, and life satisfaction
has fallen sharply.
Figure 19 is a time-series plot of economic progress and subjective well-being in Japan. The top panel shows
roughly three episodes in Japanese economic history, corresponding roughly to the changes in the survey questions
regarding subjective well-being discussed above: spectacular growth during the period 1958-69, spanning one series
break; slower growth from 1970 to 1991; and then anemic growth from 1992 onward, which coincided with the
emergence of large-scale unemployment. The symbols in the bottom panel of the Figure show the corresponding (and
incomparable across periods) movements in subjective well-being within each of the periods for which consistent data
exist.
33 Table 5 shows the proportions coded as “not sure,” “don’t know,” or “none of the above,” but we simply drop these observations
from the rest of the analysis.
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