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Department of Uh-oh
Ceteris paribus, well-being reaches a minimum, on both sides of the Atlantic, in people's mid to late 40s.
Here is the paper. It's a good thing I don't believe in that nasty happiness research...although here is a good defense of it...
Addendum: Speaking of the limits of economics, here is an excellent piece (excerpts only, buy today's WSJ) on whether economists should study autism.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 27, 2007 at 07:28 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
I don't understand the big deal about the autism paper. At worst, the researchers have found interesting correlations that merit further study. At best, they've found a causal relationship. Even if it is an endogeneous variable, like mold correlated with precipitation as one researcher points out, isn't this something new?
Also, regarding the Heckman quote in the article. Heckman said similar things in an interview with the Fed a year or two ago. He is very critical of the popularity of instrumental variables in economics. I think he even was criticizing some of his younger colleagues at Chicago whose careers and accolades are entirely due to novel usage of IV. So it's not surprising that he speaks out so strongly in this article. I don't know whether to interpret his criticism as criticism against the TV->autism paper itself, or against more general trends in applied microeconomics.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Feb 27, 2007 9:30:59 AM
Please flag all gated links. Not everyone here is an academic. You seem to flag links like the wsj, but don't mention items like nber.
Posted by: tedster at Feb 27, 2007 9:32:58 AM
Also, that the paper cannot ultimately determine what the precise biological/neurological mechanism between TV viewing and autism seems unfair. It's like criticizing a marathon runner for not being able to fly. Don't critique the paper for something it's not designed to do in the first place. The paper is intended to test a narrow hypothesis, not solve the autism puzzle completely.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Feb 27, 2007 9:38:27 AM
Would Waldman be prepared to reverse his experiment on his son by increasing his exposure to TV? If his conjecture was true, his son would become autistic again.
Posted by: bobsdad at Feb 27, 2007 10:18:13 AM
Ah, yes. It helps when reading such studies to go to the primary sources. For instance, you should read the comments about that paper on the Live Journal Asperger's community. Boos, hisses, catcalls, and "I was reading a book, not watching the idiot box", predominated. Not to mention "And what about before TV was invented?"
Posted by: Pat Mathews at Feb 27, 2007 10:22:45 AM
I have only heard negative responses from parents of autistic children in regards to the paper. I think one possible explanation is that the results point to parental choices, rather than environmental (e.g., mercury) or heriditary factors. And that's necessarily going to upset anyone who has a child with autism, since it can't help but be interpreted as "blaming the victim."
On a different note, Levitt made a good objection to this paper a while back. The worst case scenario in the paper is not as I said earlier - that they found correlations between precipitation and autism. There's still the possibility that increased rainfall increases television viewing by parents who learn about autism and increase physican visits, and in turn increase autism diagnosis. That would be purely spurious, and to my knowledge the paper cannot adequately handle that (it's been months since I read the paper, though, so maybe they do).
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Feb 27, 2007 10:43:34 AM
Russell Roberts at CafeHayek shares the WSJ skepticism and suggests doing an actual experiment.
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