Abstract
This chapter presents some results of geographical modelling capable of providing information on the different degrees of happiness and well-being attained by people in different regions and localities, under alternative scenarios and happiness definitions. The model outputs are the product of analysis of secondary socioeconomic data, such as household panel surveys and censuses of population. The author initially uses a multi-level model to establish the importance of individual-level variables compared with household-level or district-level variables in explaining happiness and well-being in the UK. However, the author also demonstrates how spatial microsimulation modelling techniques can be used to generate data at the individual level before aggregating these data to show variations in happiness in Wales and Scotland.
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Notes
- 1.
SARs districts are individual 1991 local authority districts or amalgamations of districts so that no area has a population of less than 120,000 (Marsh and Teague, 1992).
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Acknowledgements
Funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (research fellowship grant number RES-163-27-1013) is gratefully acknowledged. The author is grateful to Danny Dorling and Mark Tranmer for all their help and mentoring support and advice in the context of this research fellowship. The British Household Panel Survey data were made available through the UK Data Archive. The data were originally collected by the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-social Change at the University of Essex, now incorporated within the Institute for Social and Economic Research. All responsibility for the analysis and interpretation of the data presented in this chapter lies with the author.
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Ballas, D. (2010). Geographical Modelling of Happiness and Well-Being. In: Stillwell, J., Norman, P., Thomas, C., Surridge, P. (eds) Spatial and Social Disparities. Understanding Population Trends and Processes, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8750-8_4
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