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Soc Indic Res (2014) 119:13631377 DOI 10.1007/s11205-013-0543-0
The Happiness Workout
Paul Dolan Georgios Kavetsos Ivo Vlaev
Accepted: 16 December 2013 / Published online: 24 December 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This study tests for causality from exercise and physical activity to life satisfaction (LS) by applying an instrumental variable approach with the respondents perceived benets of exercise participation as instruments. Using data across 25 countries from the Eurobarometer survey, our results conrm the positive association between exercise and LS. In terms of causality, the results indicate that being active increases LS for both gender, though more for men than women. One main reason for this relationship is that exercise is perceived as being pleasurable, something that policy-makers should keep in mind when designing programmes to get us off the sofa.
Keywords Subjective well-being Life satisfaction Happiness
Physical activity Sport
1 Introduction
Unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles contribute towards premature death and illness (European Commission 2005). Physical activity (PA) is known to reduce the risks of a variety of serious diseases, improve mental healthsee for example Biddle et al. (2000), Roberts et al. (2000), Dimeo et al. (2001), Pollock (2001), Batty (2002), Sari (2009), Teixeira et al. (2013)and have a positive effect on sleep patterns (Brand et al. 2009; Foti et al. 2011).
P. Dolan G. Kavetsos (&)
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UKe-mail: [email protected]
I. VlaevDepartment of Surgery and Cancer, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
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More recently, there has been considerable interest in reports of subjective well-being (SWB) as a measure of individual utility (Dolan and Kahneman 2008). Various relationships between reports of happiness and life satisfaction (LS) and the range of factors that could determine those reportslike income, health and social contacthave been explored (Dolan et al. 2008). Research into reports of LS has found a negative association between LS and obesity (Stutzer 2007; Oswald and Powdthavee 2007)see also Katsaiti (2012) on a causal link running from obesity to reduced SWB.
In contrast, a positive association between LS and PA has been documentedsee for example Rasciute and Downward (2010) and Kavetsos (2011) for a representative sample analysis in England and Europe,...