We analyse the relationship between individuals' subjective wellbeing (SWB) and measures of their country's sustainability. SWB data are sourced from the World Values Survey; sustainability is measured by ecological footprint (EF) and by components of the World Bank's adjusted net savings (ANS) series. ANS, a measure of weak sustainability, represents changes in a country's capital stock including financial, physical, human and natural capital. We show that an increase in strong sustainability, measured by EF and by ANS's natural capital component, is associated with reductions in SWB over the next decade followed by a rebound in SWB over the subsequent decade. We show also that the perfect substitutability assumptions on which ANS is calculated do not hold. Our findings highlight an important political challenge: governments that run sustainable policies may decrease the near-term wellbeing of citizens. This can reduce government's short-term popularity even though the improved sustainability may raise future wellbeing.

中文翻译：

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可持续性和幸福感：主观幸福感和可持续性指标之间的动态关系

我们分析了个人主观幸福感 (SWB) 与其国家可持续性衡量标准之间的关系。SWB 数据来自世界价值观调查；可持续性是通过生态足迹（EF）和世界银行调整后的净储蓄（ANS）系列的组成部分来衡量的。ANS 是衡量可持续性弱的指标，代表一个国家资本存量的变化，包括金融、物质、人力和自然资本。我们表明，以 EF 和 ANS 的自然资本成分衡量的强可持续性的增加与未来十年 SWB 的减少以及随后十年 SWB 的反弹有关。我们还表明，计算 ANS 的完美可替代性假设不成立。我们的研究结果突出了一个重要的政治挑战：实施可持续政策的政府可能会降低公民的近期福祉。这可能会降低政府在短期内的受欢迎程度，尽管可持续性的提高可能会提高未来的福祉。