Life satisfaction equality study finds UK respondents value fairer outcomes
A UK study reports 87% would accept some lower life satisfaction for greater equality, but its scenarios were hypothetical.
By Priya Raghavan · Science Reporter
3 min read
A life satisfaction equality study involving a UK sample found that 87% of respondents said they would give up some personal life satisfaction in return for greater equality. The result measures preferences in hypothetical choices, not support for any particular tax, benefit or redistribution policy, according to the researchers’ account in The Conversation.
The researchers assessed equality in wellbeing: how people rate their lives overall. That differs from equality of income or wealth, and the reported findings do not show whether participants would endorse a specific government measure to reduce either.
What did the UK life satisfaction equality study find?
The authors, writing with colleague Tommaso Reggiani, said participants were presented with hypothetical personal risks and choices that a policymaker might make for a population. Their responses were used to establish how each person applied a zero-to-10 life-satisfaction scale and to estimate the trade-offs they would accept.
Participants’ choices ranged from risk-averse to risk-taking, the authors said. They also reported that respondents tended to be more cautious when deciding about outcomes affecting other people than when weighing risks for themselves.
Using a computer model of those choices, the researchers compared the present unequal distribution of life satisfaction in the UK with an imagined society in which every person had the identical score. They estimated that the average respondent would accept about a one-point fall in average life satisfaction to reach that equal-outcomes scenario.
That figure should not be treated as a forecast or a policy target. The authors described complete equality of life satisfaction as impractical and potentially dystopian, saying the model instead provides a way to put a number on how respondents valued greater equality in wellbeing.
How was life satisfaction measured?
Subjective life satisfaction is a person’s own rating of their life, rather than an income, health or wealth measure. The UK Office for National Statistics uses a zero-to-10 question; its figures for April 2022 through March 2023 showed 94% of people rating their satisfaction at five or higher, with an average of about 7.5, according to the researchers.
The authors said their UK sample showed little apparent connection between the gambles people accepted and either voting choices or wider political views. That finding is limited to the reported sample and does not establish that political differences over inequality are absent.
They argue that public decisions based on wellbeing should also take fairness into account, and that their method could help compare public preferences over wellbeing and equality. The available account does not include the study’s sample size, recruitment details or uncertainty estimates, so the findings cannot by themselves be extended to people outside the UK sample.
This story draws on original reporting from Phys.org.