Hungry today, unhappy tomorrow? Childhood hunger and subjective wellbeing later in life

Abstract

I use anchoring vignettes to show that, on data for eleven European countries, exposure to episodes of hunger in childhood leads people to adopt lower subjective standards to evaluate satisfaction with life in adulthood. I also show that, as a consequence, estimates of the association between childhood starvation and late-life wellbeing that do not allow for reporting heterogeneity are biased towards finding a positive correlation. These results highlight the need to consider rescaling when drawing inference on subjective outcomes.

Keywords: Anchoring vignettes; Hunger; Subjective wellbeing.