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Election Outcomes and Individual Subjective Wellbeing in Great Britain
Author(s) -
Gray Daniel,
Pickard Harry,
Munford Luke
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
economica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.532
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1468-0335
pISSN - 0013-0427
DOI - 10.1111/ecca.12362
Subject(s) - regression discontinuity design , exploit , natural experiment , unit (ring theory) , politics , order (exchange) , general election , national election , demographic economics , longitudinal data , subjective well being , political science , psychology , social psychology , economics , sociology , computer science , demography , law , happiness , statistics , computer security , mathematics education , mathematics , finance
Exploiting novel longitudinal data on individuals in Great Britain matched to their parliamentary constituency, we find that supporting the incumbent political party, at both the national and constituency levels, exerts a positive influence on individual subjective wellbeing. This relationship varies across different measures of subjective wellbeing, gender and personal characteristics. We then implement a regression discontinuity in time design to estimate the impact of a quasi‐natural experiment, where we exploit the timing of the survey around the 2010 election date in order to identify a causal relationship. We find that Liberal Democrat supporters have approximately one‐unit higher level of overall life satisfaction after their party’s electoral success.