Well Being

This Research Programme is dedicated to the study of well-being and its causes. It aims at fostering an interdisciplinary debate involving economists, psychologists, other social scientists, and clinical scientists towards a better understanding of the relationship between well-being, biology, and socio-economic conditions. Its ultimate objective is to identify the actions and policies to be implemented by individuals, communities and governments in order to achieve higher well-being at the individual and aggregate level.

Publications

· Michelangeli A., (2015), Quality of Life in Cities: Equity, Sustainable Development and Happiness from a Policy Perspective, Routledge, Series: Routledge Advances in Regional Economics, Science and Policy.

ABSTRACT

In the last few decades, urban quality of life has received increasing interest from policy makers who aim to make cities better places to live. In addition to the aim of improving quality of life, sustainable and equitable development is also often included in the policy agendas of decision makers. This book aims to link quality of life to related issues such as sustainability, equity, and subjective wellbeing. While less than one-third of the world's population lived in cities in 1950, about two thirds of humanity is expected to live in urban areas by 2030. This dramatic increase in the number of people living in urban areas serves as the backdrop for this book’s analysis of cities. This book will be useful to students and researchers in economics, architecture and urban planning, sociology and political sciences, as well as policy makers.

· Colombo E., Michelangeli A., Stanca L., (2014), La Dolce Vita: Hedonic Estimates of Quality of Life in Italian Cities, Regional Studies, 48(8), 1404-1418.

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates quality of life in Italian cities using the hedonic approach. It analyses micro-level data for housing and labour markets to estimate compensating differentials for local amenities within four domains: weather, environment, services and society. Large compensating differentials in housing markets are found, whereas the effects on wages are relatively small. Quality of life varies substantially across space and is generally better in large and medium-sized cities of the Centre-North. Services and social conditions are strongly related to overall quality of life. It is also found that, across cities, quality of life is positively and significantly related to subjective well-being.

· Brambilla M.G., Michelangeli A., Peluso E., (2013), Equity in the City: On Measuring Urban (Ine)Quality of Life, Urban Studies, 50, 3205-3224.

ABSTRACT

In economic literature, the quality of life (QoL) in a city is usually assessed through the standard revealedpreference approach, which defines a QoL index as the monetary value of urban amenities. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to measure urban QoL when equity concerns arise. The standard approach is extended by introducing preferences for even accessibility to amenities throughout the city into the QoL assessment. The QoL index is then reformulated to account for the unequal availability of amenities across neighbourhoods. The more unbalanced the distribution of amenities across neighbourhoods, the lower the assessment based on the new index. This methodology is applied to derive a QoL index for the city of Milan. The results show that the unequal distribution of amenities across neighbourhoods significantly affects the assessment of QoL for that city.