Who says there’s no romance in macroeconomics? Betsey Stevenson and I are currently working on a paper for a forthcoming Brookings Panel, assessing the relationship between levels of economic development and various measures of subjective well-being.
We are working with an absolutely fabulous data set: the Gallup World Poll. The good folks at Gallup are now surveying people in more than 130 countries every year. And they are asking all sorts of interesting questions about subjective well-being.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, let me give you a sneak peek of our findings on love and economic development.
It turns out that love is incredibly democratic, and is as common in poor countries as it is in rich countries. And, encouragingly, about 70 percent of us report feeling a lot of love on any given day. This isn’t as obvious as it may sound, as love’s enemy, anger, is significantly more prevalent in poor countries than in rich.
The data suggest some interesting places to look for love: the Philippines, Rwanda, and Puerto Rico top the “love tables.” Meanwhile those in Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan are feeling the least love. (Unfortunately, the love question wasn’t asked in the United States.)
While subjective data are relatively new to economics, I’m very excited by what we can learn, and will be sure to get back to you with more results as our research continues.
Now that we can measure something about Gross National Love, you can be sure that economists will start theorizing about it, and crunching these data to test their theories. What is your theory of love, and how might we test it in the data?
and 
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I notice that the former SSRs concentrate at the bottom of the “love” scale, *and* that their trend slope is significantly higher than the overall slope. If these nations are removed from the analysis, how flat does the best fit get? Wouldn’t that mean “money can’t buy me love” (except in the former Soviet Union)?
This is an abstract from an actual journal article
set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.
The study of romantic love can provide insight into the general process of introducing novelty into a system of interacting variables. Novelty, however, is functional only in an open system characterized by uncertainty where the variables have not all been functionally looped and system slacks are readily available to accommodate new things. In a closed system where all the objective functions and variables must be compatible to achieve stability and viability, adjustments in the value of some variables through romantic idealization may be dysfunctional if they represent merely residual responses to the creative combination of the variables in the open sub-system.”
The author was K. K. Fung of the Department of Economics, Memphis State University, Memphis. It was from a journal article in 1979. More info on it is at this link. The entire article, which is not too long, can be found at this link.
Sorry, this is the first paragraph of the abstract. I did get the whole thing in
“Romantic love is characterized by a preoccupation with a deliberately restricted set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.”
The y-axis of the graph is mislabeled. It is not a percent as is marked, but a fraction, where a value of unity corresponds to 100%.
The plot implies that only 0.7% of people reported feeling a lot of love, but that is really supposed to be 100 times greater, or 70%. Thank goodness it is the latter, not the former! What a depressing impression of the people of the world that would give!
A small but important typo!
subjective (well being)? Isn’t subjective another way of saying opinion?
Rwanda is near the top of the “love table”?
Yes, that explains why so many lonely people are going on holiday in Rwanda – hoping to find love.
Amazing that the question wasn’t asked in the US – a shame.
I agree with Victor and the seconder who point out that this has more to do with culture than actual differences in our state of happiness. Not only are some cultures reticent, some value urbane cynicism and regard a big smile as evidence of stupidity. You ask some citizens of the former Soviet bloc if they “felt love” and you might as well be asking them if they feel like admitting to moments of mindless crotch-fondling.
What a bunch of nonsense! Please don’t pretend that this is science in any form. Why would you even expect to find anything unless you have done absolutely no background reading on cultures, or have absolutely no experience outside your own narrow demographic? That this would pass as academic research is mind boggling.