Why hope matters as a metric of economic and social well-being
In a society marked by extreme inequality of income and opportunity, why should economists care about how people feel? The truth is that feelings of well-being are critical metrics that predict future life outcomes. In this timely and innovative account, economist Carol Graham argues for the importance of hope-little studied in economics at present-as an independent dimension of well-being. Given America-s current mental health crisis, thrown into stark relief by COVID, hope may be the most important measure of well-being, and researchers are tracking trends in hope as a key factor in understanding the rising numbers of -deaths of despair- and premature mortality.
Graham, an authority on the study of well-being, points to empirical evidence demonstrating that hope can improve people-s life outcomes and that despair can destroy them. These findings, she argues, merit deeper exploration. Graham discuss
