Felicidade, políticas públicas e choques positivos de renda : uma abordagem econômica

Abstract

Happiness is one of the greatest interest objects to humanity and represents the main purpose of life for most people. In recent years, many sciences have studied this subject by identifying the subjective elements that determine people s happiness degree, as an attempt to know how they interrelate, to identify their influence on happiness and to measure the possible impacts over human being lives. A large number of researches exploring the link between happiness and economy has been developed in the last decade, resulting in the growth of literature and available databases associated with satisfaction and happiness of individuals, expanding the frontiers of knowledge in the area. Important results were obtained and great progress has been made, however, much remains to be done to fill the large gaps that still exist in this area, since no significant effort has being made accordingly in most countries. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to develop a study in the Federal District of Brazil, having the people happiness level as the survey central object, assessed in light of the different studied variables. To make this possible, 1521 questionnaires were applied between 08-31-2009 and 10-28-2009, generating a current and wide database, capable of supporting several other scientific studies on happiness in the Federal District. The study focused mainly on the personal relationships, the number of sexual relations, the number of sexual partners and on the influence of positive income shocks on happiness. We believe that the development of researches like this is essential for the definition of more efficient and safe ways to reach the improvement of people's happiness - primary role of public policies to be implemented by governments. We expect that the results generated by this research can be widely disseminated and used so that they can represent a first step towards improving the quality of life of each person seeking happiness.