Title: The correlates of subjective overall security

Authors: Giovanna Garrone; Guido Ortona

Addresses: Institute of Public Choice, Università del Piemonte Orientale, via Cavour 84, 15121 Alessandria, Italy ' Institute of Public Choice, Università del Piemonte Orientale, via Cavour 84, 15121 Alessandria, Italy

Abstract: This paper deals with an important component of human wellbeing, which has been traditionally disregarded by the economic discourse: the individual's perception of his/her overall security. We study this feature within the framework of the economics of happiness. We argue that subjective security is a multi-dimensional psychological asset and briefly discuss its substantial neglect by the economic literature (Section 1). In Section 2, we make the case for the economics of happiness approach, which we apply using data from a representative survey (described in Section 3). Multivariate analyses (Sections 4 to 6) confirm that perceived individual life security is a multidimensional item: its main correlates can be classified as economic, relational, environmental and value-related. This supports the hypothesis that some compensation is possible among different dimensions of security. Structural differences emerge between gender groups.

Keywords: economics of happiness; EOH; gender effects; health satisfaction; income satisfaction; job satisfaction; relational goods; individual safety; individual security; well-being.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHD.2013.057671

International Journal of Happiness and Development, 2013 Vol.1 No.3, pp.274 - 293

Received: 11 May 2013
Accepted: 05 Aug 2013
Published online: 19 Jul 2014 *

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