Subjective wellbeing impacts of national and subnational fiscal policies

Abstract: We study the association between fiscal policy and subjective wellbeing using fiscal data on 34 countries across 129 country-years, combined with over 170,000 people's subjective wellbeing scores. While past research has found that "distortionary taxes" (e.g. income taxes) are associated with slow growth relative to "non-distortionary" taxes (GST/VAT), we find that distortionary taxes are associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing than non-distortionary taxes. This relationship holds when we control for macro-economic variables and country fixed effects. If this relationship is causal, it would offer an explanation as to why governments pursue these policies that harm economic growth. We find that richer people's subjective wellbeing is less harmed by indirect taxes than people with lower incomes, while "unproductive expenditure" is associated with higher wellbeing for the middle class relative to others, possibly reflecting middle class capture. We see little evidence f

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Region: the journal of ERSA ; 3 (2016) 1 ; 43-69

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2016
• Creator: Ormsby, Judd ; Grimes, Arthur L. ; Robinson, Anna ; Wong, Siu Yuat

Further information

• DOI: 10.18335/region.v3i1.121
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2019052715195682795938
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:52 PM CET