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The Relationship Between Subjective Well-Being and Self-Reported Health: Evidence from Ecuador

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Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between self-reported health and subjective well-being in two dimensions: cognitive and emotional. Using the Household Living Conditions Survey 2014, this study represents the first approach for Ecuador and Latin America to test how the two dimensions of subjective well-being explain self-reported health. The cognitive dimension is measured by a happiness question in a life-evaluative mode. Whereas the emotional dimension is proxied by an average of 16 psychosocial well-being questions that indicates how many, from the last 7 days, the person had a poor emotional state. We use descriptive statistics and a probit model with an instrumental variable approach to address the omitted variables bias and reverse causality. After controlling for socioeconomic, personal, regional, and health related variables, the results indicate that happiness or the cognitive dimension of well-being is the main predictor of self-reported health, quantitatively more important than having a recent illness (objective health measure), habits (sport) or health care (health importance). Furthermore, more days in a negative emotional state is associated with worse self-reported health.

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Notes

  1. Net affect results from the difference between positive and negative episodes. See Kahneman and Kruger (2006, p. 11).

  2. In Goodman and Kruskal’s Gamma (ϒ) statistic is not defined which variable is dependent or independent.

  3. According to Paxton (1999, p.89.) “Social capital is the idea that individuals and groups can gain resources from their connections to one another (and the type of these connections)”.

  4. According to World Health Organization / Global Health Expenditure Data Base

    http://apps.who.int/nha/database/Select/Indicators/en

  5. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) is 0.027, the comparative fit index (CFI) is 0.95, and the standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) is 0.008. All of these goodness of fit tests indicate a close fit model.

  6. The results from models with poor or acceptable fit are available upon request from the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    H. Nicolás Acosta-González

  2. Faculty of Economics, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

    H. Nicolás Acosta-González

  3. Department of Applied Economics (Statistics and Econometrics), Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Oscar D. Marcenaro-Gutiérrez

  4. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Campus de El Ejido, 6, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Oscar D. Marcenaro-Gutiérrez

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  1. H. Nicolás Acosta-González
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Correspondence to H. Nicolás Acosta-González.

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Research Data Policy

Data is deposited at Acosta-González, Hugo Nicolás, 2019, "National Survey of Employment, Unemployment, Underemployment (ENEMDU) 2013-2014", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JVPMBM, Harvard Dataverse, DRAFT VERSION

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H. Nicolás Acosta-González is a PhD Student in Economics in Universidad de Málaga.

Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 2
figure 2

Self-reported health and subjective well-being

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Table 8 Description of psychosocial well-being questions used to calculate emotional dimension of well-being
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Acosta-González, H.N., Marcenaro-Gutiérrez, O.D. The Relationship Between Subjective Well-Being and Self-Reported Health: Evidence from Ecuador. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 1961–1981 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-020-09852-z

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