L. Becchetti, 30 Novembre - 1 Dicembre 2021 - Webinar: Gli effetti della pandemia sulla soddisfazione per la vita e il benessere: analisi e prospettive Titolo: La pandemia attraverso gli indicatori soggettivi a livello internazionale: un paradosso?

1. La pandemia attraverso gli indicatori soggettivi a
livello internazionale: un paradosso?
Alcune ipotesi interpretative
Leonardo Becchetti, Università Tor Vergata

2. 2
Confirms of the paradox are also
reported by Blanchflower and
Oswald (2004) for the UK, Frey
and Stutzer (2002b) on a large
sample of countries using data
from the World Database of
Happiness and the U.S. Bureau of
Census and Veenhoven (1993) for
Japan over the period 1958-1987.
The Easterlin paradox
Decoupling between gdp growth and life satisfaction ?
Rationales
GDP per capita not a good measure of
personal income
Hedonic adaptation
Relative income effect
Baumol’s disease of relational goods

3. The new (COVID-19) Easterlin paradox
• YouGov wellbeing data UK

6. Italy is not an
outlier….
• World Happiness Report
• Almost two/third of world
countries register a
significant and positive
effect on life satisfaction of
the COVID-19 time interval

7. Likely interpretations…
• Polarisation between satisfied and unsatisfied
• Human being are sense searcher (generativity as a main driver of richness of
sense)..higher richness of sense in hard times (ie. less suicides during wars)
• Value of smart work in terms of work-life balance
• Value of feeling part of a community with a clear plot
• Reassessment of value of health and life in hard times

9. Three types of relationship
• Face-to-face in presence (1st type)
• Face to-face at distance (2nd type)
• Neither face-to-face nor in presence (3rd type)
• …not being constrained to 1st type relationship has the effect of
improving : i) productivity; ii) worklife balance; iii) environmental
sustainability

10. Five advantages
• COST REDUCTION EFFECT (positive)
• FREQUENCY OF INTERACTIONS EFFECT (positive)
• OPTIMAL TIME/PLACE LOCATION EFFECT (positive)
• WORKLIFE BALANCE EFFECT (positive)
• RELATION QUALITY EFFECT (negative)

11. Optimal strategy
• Using 1st type for team building and identity
• Using 3rd type for the rest…

12. Relational goods (1)
• A specific kind of local public goods (requiring the joint participation
of at least two individuals) for which investment, production and
consumption coincide (Gui, 2000; Ulhaner, 1989) Antirival more than
rival
• Examples of relational goods: friendship, love affection, marriage,
various forms of social activities, etc.
• Antirival more than rival

13. Relational goods (2)
• They require sincerity or genuineness to be valuable (Bruni and Stanca, 2008).
These two features cannot be acquired on the market (without being
transformed in something completely different) even though they can be
generated as a by product of some instrumental activity. This does not mean that
they don’t have a price and a shadow value to be estimated.
• Bardsley and Sugden (2006) use the Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
concept of ‘fellow-feelings’, to describe the mental states produced during such
non instrumental social interactions. Fellow feelings are, in turn, fuelled by
emotional consent and a record of intense experiences lived together

14. 14
The opportunity cost of time invested in human
relationship is grown enormously with the increase in
labour productivity and in opportunities of non relational
leisure
Relational goods require coordinated effort and suffer
from coordination failures
Human being ends up in a “low relational good” trap
All indicators of relational goods show their crisis in
Western countries….
….but relational goods have a strong positive effect on
individual’s life satisfaction
Sources: Helliwell and Putnam (2004), Bartolini et al.
(2007), Corrado and Aslam (2007), Becchetti et al.
(2008), Bruni and Stanca (2008), Meier and Stutzer
(2008), Powdathvee (2008)
The “Baumol” disease of relational goods

15. Resilience, social capital, active citizenship and
subjective wellbeing:
the contribution of generativity
Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata

16. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Variable construction
Generativity
Creativity
Produce innovation that is economically or
socially useless or not oriented to the
improvement of other people lives
Care for other people wellbeing
Can often lead to frustration as it makes
difficult to make new steps forward in the
solution of social problems with respect to
the existing state of affairs
Generativity is the combination of creativity and care for other people wellbeing

17. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Descriptive findings
Descriptive findings of the ProdGenerativity variable used in the empirical
analysis shows that:
• around 8 percent of respondents report the highest score, while 37.7 percent
register a score of 18 (the average generativity level) or below

18. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Descriptive findings
Y axis: life satisfaction Y axis: feeling in good spirit Y axis: calm and peaceful Y axis: positive about myself
Y axis: resilience Y axis: voting in last
national elections
Y axis: most people can
be trusted
Y axis: active citizenship

19. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Econometric analysis
In order to test the impact of generativity on the selected dependent
variables we estimate the following specification:
= 𝛼0 + 𝛼1𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑑𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦𝑖 + 𝛼2𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑖 +
𝑓
𝛽𝑓𝐷𝐴𝑔𝑒𝐶𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑓,𝑖
+
𝑗
𝛾𝑗𝐷𝐼𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝐷𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑗,𝑖 + 𝛼3𝑁𝐻𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖 +
𝑘
𝛿𝑘𝐷𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑘,𝑖
+
𝑚
𝜃𝑚𝐷𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙_𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠𝑚,𝑖 +
𝑛
𝑘𝑛𝐷𝑆𝑒𝑙𝑓_𝐴𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑_𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑛,𝑖
+
𝑠
𝜌𝑠𝐷𝐽𝑜𝑏_𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠𝑠,𝑖 +
𝑤
𝜑𝑤 𝐷𝑊𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑤 +
𝑧
𝜔𝑧 𝐷𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑧,𝑖 + 𝑒𝑖
𝐷𝑒𝑝𝑣𝑎𝑟
where our dependent variable is, in turn, a subjective wellbeing, resilience or social capital
variable of those described previous section and Prodgenerativity is the product of the
answers to the two generativity

20. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Econometric findings
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES
Life
satisfaction Positive
about
myself
In good
spirit
Calm and
peaceful
Resilience
People have
to be
trusted
Voting in
last national
elections
Active
citizenship
Generativity 0.022*** 0.018*** 0.015*** 0.007*** 0.010*** 0.004*** 0.004*** 0.015***
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)
Observations 300,123 67,923 66,825 67,739 67,637 300,677 281,268 293,992
R-squared 0.269 0.132 0.221 0.124 0.120 0.190
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
For complete results please refer to the paper

21. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Robustness checks (cont’d)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
ESTIMATES Male
Female
High Income Low Income
High
education
Low
education
Generativity 0.024*** 0.021*** 0.020*** 0.024*** 0.023*** 0.022***
(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
ESTIMATES Resilience 1 Resilience 2 Resilience 3 Resilience 4 Resilience 5
Generativity 0.038*** 0.026*** 0.019*** 0.018*** 0.023***
(0.005) (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.004)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ESTIMATES Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3 Wave 4 Wave 5 Wave 6 Wave 7 Wave 8 Wave 9
Generativity 0.017*** 0.019*** 0.021*** 0.022*** 0.024*** 0.027*** 0.023*** 0.022*** 0.022***
(0.002) (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003)
Robustness check on the impact of generativity on life satisfaction

22. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Robustness checks (cont’d)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ESTIMATES Austria Belgium Bulgaria Switzerland Cyprus
Czech
Repubblic Germany Denmark Estonia
Generativity 0.023*** 0.013*** 0.036*** 0.018*** 0.033*** 0.026*** 0.022*** 0.015*** 0.032***
(0.003) (0.002) (0.004) (0.002) (0.005) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ESTIMATES Spain Finland France Great Britain Greece Croatia Hungary Ireland Israel
Generativity 0.025*** 0.016*** 0.012*** 0.015*** 0.022*** 0.030*** 0.020*** 0.027*** 0.019***
(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.004) (0.005) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ESTIMATES Iceland Italy Lithuania Luxembourg Latvia Netherland Norway Poland Portugal
Generativity 0.012*** 0.035*** 0.036*** 0.002 0.036*** 0.014*** 0.017*** 0.019*** 0.037***
(0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.008) (0.006) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
ESTIMATES Russia Sweden Slovenia Slovakia Turkey Ukraine
Generativity 0.025*** 0.016*** 0.023*** 0.032*** 0.003 0.024***
(0.003) (0.002) (0.003) (0.004) (0.006) (0.005)
Robustness check on the impact of generativity on life satisfaction
For complete results about the other robustness checks please refer to the paper

23. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
DEP VARIABLES
Instrument type
Life
satisfaction
(a)
Positive
about
myself
(a)
In good
spirit
(c)
Calm and
peaceful
(a)
Resilience
(c)
People have
to be
trusted
(d)
Voting in
last national
elections
(b)
Active
citizenship
(a)
Second stage
Generativity 0.029*** 0.025*** 0.020*** 0.017*** 0.021*** 0.111** 0.021*** 0.021**
(instrumented) (0.005) (0.005) (0.007) (0.045) (0.007) (0.050) (0.004) (0.004)
Instrument significance in
First stage 0.948*** 0.896*** 0.920*** 0.889*** 0.892*** 0.405*** 0.894*** 0.948***
(0.020) (0. 042) (0.047) (0.042) (048) (0.065) (0.020) (0.020)
Falsification test
Instrument in the non
instrumented standard
regression 0.008 0.007 0.006 0.0086 0.010 0.041 0.015 0.006
(0.007) (0.005) (0.007) (0.005) (0.007) (0.022) (0.014) (0.005)
Instruments:
a) Average ProdGenerativity of 30 year elder individuals of the opposite sex in the same country
b) Average ProdGenerativity of individuals of the opposite sex in the same country
c) Average ProdGenerativity of 40 year elder individuals of the opposite sex in the same country
d) dummy taking value one if the father of the respondent was self-employed or high skilled when the respondent was 14th (only
respondents who are 60 or older are included in the estimate)

24. Alcuni attributi individuali
della generatività dagli studi
empirici
Espressività personale
orientata ad un fine
Coinvolgimento che implica
uno sforzo
Indicatori locali di generatività:
Start up, brevetti, nuove imprese,
organizzazioni terzo settore, numero
volontari, fertilità, longevità attiva,
riduzione dei NEET
«Puoi avere reddito, salute,
istruzione ma se passi giornata
sdraiato sul divano non sei
felice. Felicità non ha a che
fare con le dotazioni ma con la
capacità di mettersi in gioco»

25. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Introduction
The history of the mankind can be seen a chain of overlapping generations where
each generation stands on the shoulder of knowledge and discoveries of the
former
What happens to individuals who contribute positively and significantly to
this transmission ?
Is there an intrinsic reward to the contribution given to the human
progress ?
Social or scientific innovations that any generation creates become foundations
or cornerstones for new more advanced scientific or social outcomes of those
who will come after

26. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Introduction (Cont’d)
Assume that there is like a “life satisfaction counter” that measures and rewards
creative other-regarding individuals for what they are doing for the civil progress
and for the wellbeing of those who will follow
In ancient times there were different population types:
1. creative individuals finding satisfaction for being as such
2. creative individuals not finding satisfaction for that
3. non creative individuals finding satisfaction for being so
First type the first was more beneficial for the evolution of the human species
(ie. contributed to find solutions for their groups to survive in difficult living
environments) and therefore evolution determined its prevalence over time

27. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Introduction (Cont’d)
Our research hypothesis for this paper:
The combination of creativity and care for other people wellbeing, that we define as
generativity, is significantly and positively associated with various measures of
subjective wellbeing (more specifically, cognitive measures such as life satisfaction
and several affective measures related to feelings perceived)
We as well test whether generativity positively contributes to other related
psychological and social virtues such as resilience, interpersonal trust,
participation to political elections and active citizenship

28. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Contribution to the the literature
Our paper contributes to several strands of the literature:
1. Investigation of the drivers of life satisfaction, challenged by the so called
Easterlin paradox (Easterlin and Angelescu, 2009)
2. The effects of generativity. We test whether evidence on the role of
generativity found on small groups in the psychology literature is robust and
can be extended to a large cross-country sample of observations collected
across different survey waves (Erikson, 1993; McAdams and St. Aubin, 1992
and 1998 )
3. Investigation of drivers of reslience intended as the capacity to revert as quick
as possible to the previous wellbeing level after a negative shock (Southwick
et al., 2014)
4. Investigation of drivers of active citenziship (Mascherini et al. 2009)

29. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Variable construction
Some historical examples?
• Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish American medical researcher that developed
the oral polio vaccine. He renounced to the patent in order to spread even
more the benefits of his discovery. Albert Sabin maximised the combination
of generativity intended as combination of creativity and care for other
people wellbeing and created great benefits for the future generations.
• William James Sidis (1898-1944) can be taken as example of incredible
creativity (a child prodigy with exceptional mathematical skills) who lived
however extremely isolated, died relatively young and suffered lack of care
for other wellbeing ending up with no important contributions to societal
progress

30. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Creation of the generativity variable
The database used in our empirical analysis is the European Social Survey (ESS).
The dataset contains information for 33 countries across 9 different waves on
social and political preferences, beliefs and socio-demographic variables of a
large sample of European respondents aged 15 and over
We calculate our generativity measures starting from these two claims included
in the European Social Survey database:
1. Important to think new ideas and being creative
2. Important to help people and care for others wellbeing

31. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Creation of the generativity variable (cont’d)
Degree of consent to both sentences can be given by respondents by choosing
one of the six modalities (very much like me, like me, somewhat like me, a little
like me, not like me, not like me at all).
We attribute a value of six to the first modality, five to the second, up to one to
the last.
We therefore create a product variable between the two scores that we call:
ProdGenerativity (ranging from 1 to 36)

32. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Descriptive findings
Descriptive findings of the dependent variables used in the empirical analysis
shows that:
• Almost 58 percent of the sample have felt calm and peaceful and 53 percent
cheerful and in good spirits most of the time or all time past week
• Around half of the sample declares oneself resilient by disagreeing on the
claim that when things go wrong in her/his life it takes a long time to get back
normal
• almost 67 percent agree or strongly agree to feel very positive about
her/himself, while 26 percent of the sample declares a life satisfaction level
between 8 and 10. 77 percent of sample respondents have voted in the last
political election, while 38 percent of them are “active citizens” according to
our classification

33. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Descriptive findings
How satisfied with life as a whole
(0=extremely dissatisfied, 10=
extremely satisfied)
Most people can be trusted or you
can’t be too careful (0=you can’t be too
careful, 10= most people can be
trusted)
Positive about myself (4=agree
strongly, 3=agree, 2=neither agree
nor disagree, 1=disagree,
0=disagree strongly)
Lack of Resilience (5=agree strongly,
4=agree, 3=neither agree nor disagree,
2=disagree, 1=disagree strongly)
Feeling in good spirit (6=all of the time,
5=most of the time, 4=more than half of
the time, 3=less than half of the time,
2=some of the time, 1=at no time)
Calm and peaceful (1=non or almost
none of the time, 2=some of the time,
3=most of the time, 4=all or almost all
of the time)

34. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Descriptive findings
In order to provide an idea of the descriptive correlation of our product
generativity measure with the selected dependent variables we group
ProdGenerativity in six classes (for simplicity of exposition) and plot the
corresponding confidence intervals of each class for all our dependent variables
These descriptive statistics suggest a strong positive link between generativity,
on the one side, and resilience and both cognitive and positive affect subjective
wellbeing variables on the other side (NEXT SLIDE)

35. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Econometric findings
We use probit specifications for the (0/1) variables of the decision to vote and
active citizenship, while ordinary least squares for the other variables,
performing robustness checks with ordered probit estimates that keep account
their discrete qualitative nature
The generativity variable is strongly positive and significant in all of the eight
estimates and the impact on life satisfaction corresponds to a distance of .8
points of the dependent variable from the lowest to the highest generativity
value

36. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Econometric findings
The effect of controls on subjective wellbeing is consistent with what generally
found in the literature:
• self-assessed health has a strong significant effect
• age is U-shaped, income is positive and significant and marital status and
employment variables have the usual sign and significance
• Self-assessed poor health has negative effect, as expected, on both subjective
wellbeing and social capital variables
• Success of relational life impacts more positively on the dependent variables
than widowhood and separation
• Male gender is positively correlated with resilience confirming findings on the
gender life satisfaction/depression paradox (Becchetti and Conzo, 2020)
• Signs for the unemployed tend to be negative and significant, while those of
the retired positive and significant vis-à-vis the employed omitted
benchmark.

37. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Robustness checks
1. We re-estimate OLS specification with ordered probit taking into account the
discrete qualitative nature of most wellbeing and social capital variables
2. We use alternative generativity indexes such as the sum of the two individual
components, the unweighted average or the same variables setting to zero
the first two more negative answers to the creativity and care for others
questions
3. We as well introduce as additional controls the frequency of meetings with
friends (as proxy of relational life) and self-declared political opinions
4. We as well try estimates removing the more subjective “feeling about
present income” variable without substantial changes in our findings
Main findings are unchanged
and the alternative generativity indicators maintains the same sign and significance

38. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Robustness checks (cont’d)
5. We test whether our findings are robust across the nine different waves
6. We as well consider that differences in languages and national cultures can
bias perception of dependent variables (life satisfaction, positive affect,
creativity, helping others). We therefore estimate the model separately for
each of the 33 countries in the EES database
7. We repeat the same checks for dependent variables different from life
satisfaction and find similar robust findings (not in this presentation)
8. We finally augment our base specification introducing country/wave shocks
and month of the year interview
Main findings are unchanged

39. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Robustness checks (cont’d)
We argued that generative individuals are more resilient because having a
clearer sense of life helps them to stand up after a shock, and that the resilient
have higher subjective wellbeing because, coeteris paribus, they recover faster
from a shock
We therefore wonder whether the positive impact of generativity on subjective
wellbeing persists when conditional to the same level of resilience
In other terms we want to test whether there is an impact of generativity on
subjective wellbeing independent from its indirect effect mediated through
resilience
We find that this is the case
Generativity is significant on life sat. and positive affect in each of the separate estimates conditional to a given level of
resilience. The magnitude becomes much larger for individuals with the two lowest levels of resilience where the
difference between highest and lowest generativity creates a difference of 1.08 in the life sat. scale

40. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
The significant and robust association between generativity and our
independent variables can be affected by endogeneity or reverse causality
We therefore devise an instrumental variable approach to test for the existence
of a direct causality link going from generativity, on the one side, to subjective
wellbeing, social capital, resilience or active citizenship on the other side
BUT
Very hard to find instruments, especially when the dependent variable is
subjective wellbeing since it is difficult to imagine a valid instrument that has not
impact on it directly

41. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
In order to select our instrument we must consider the implicit trade-off
between weakness and validity
An instrument that is too far from the respondent can be weak even though
valid (not directly affecting the dependent variable), while an instrument closer
to the respondent is stronger but with higher probability of not being valid

42. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
Dependent variables:
1. Life satisfaction 2. Feeling positive about myself 3. Being calm and peaceful 4. Active citizenship
Instrument:
average generativity level of 30 year older individuals of the opposite sex of the
respondent’s country
• Is relevant since it is significantly correlated with generativity of the respondent
• The rationale is that it affects domestic generativity atmosphere that is significantly correlated with the
respondent’s generativity
• We as well assume that the instrument is valid since there is no reason to believe that it affects directly the
level of the dependent variables formulated by the respondent. (falsification test with the selected instrument
is not significant when included in the non instrumented estimate)
• Second stage coefficients of IV estimates are significant and slightly higher in magnitude than in the
corresponding non IV estimates thereby not rejecting the hypothesis of a causality link from generativity and
our dependent variables

43. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
Dependent variables:
5. Resilience6. Being in good spirit
Instrument:
average generativity level of 40 (instead of 30) year older individuals of the opposite sex
of the respondent’s country
• Is relevant since it is significantly correlated with generativity of the respondent
• The rationale is that it affects domestic generativity atmosphere that is significantly correlated with the
respondent’s generativity
• We as well assume that the instrument is valid since there is no reason to believe that it affects directly the
level of the dependent variables formulated by the respondent. (falsification test with the selected instrument
is not significant when included in the non instrumented estimate)
• Second stage coefficients of IV estimates are significant and slightly higher in magnitude than in the
corresponding non IV estimates thereby not rejecting the hypothesis of a causality link from generativity and
our dependent variables

44. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
Dependent variables:
7. Voting in last national elections
Instrument:
average generativity level of individuals of the opposite sex of the respondent’s country
• Is relevant since it is significantly correlated with generativity of the respondent
• The rationale is that it affects domestic generativity atmosphere that is significantly correlated with the
respondent’s generativity
• We as well assume that the instrument is valid since there is no reason to believe that it affects directly the
level of the dependent variables formulated by the respondent. (falsification test with the selected instrument
is not significant when included in the non instrumented estimate)
• Second stage coefficients of IV estimates are significant and slightly higher in magnitude than in the
corresponding non IV estimates thereby not rejecting the hypothesis of a causality link from generativity and
our dependent variables

45. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Instrumental variable approach
Dependent variables:
8. People have to be trusted
Instrument:
a (0/1) dummy taking value one if the father of the respondent was self-employed or high
skilled when the respondent was 14th including in the estimate only respondents who are
60 or older
• Consider that in our estimate we as well control for additional drivers that can be suspected of fuelling indirect
causality patterns such as respondent income and education
• Our falsification test shows also in this case that the instrument (father job characteristic when the respondent
was 14) is not significant if added in our standard regression
• The instrument is significant in first stage of our IV estimate that is, it positively and significantly affects current
generativity. The interpretation is that having a father with a skilled job or being self-employed when
adolescent stimulated respondents generativity
• Second stage coefficients of IV estimates are significant and slightly higher in magnitude than in the
corresponding non IV estimates thereby not rejecting the hypothesis of a causality link from generativity and
our dependent variables

46. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Conclusions and policy implications
We find several traces in the history of economic and political thought (from
John Stuart Mill, to Genovesi, to Robert Kennedy) of the importance of
generativity for human beings. We conceptualise this idea by creating a
generativity variable conceived as a product of creativity and care for others
wellbeing
We test the association of this variable with (cognitive and positive affect)
measures of subjective wellbeing, resilience, social capital and active citizenship
over more than 400,000 individual observations in the nine waves of the
European Social Survey.

47. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Conclusions and policy implications
Our findings provide strong support and evidence on the significant association
between generativity, on the one side, and the above described selected
dependent variables, on the other side. Estimated findings are quite robust
across gender, age and education splits and independent from time and cultural
country specific effects since they remain significant in estimates considering
only individuals living in the same country
In order to identify a direct causality link we use as instrument average
generativity values of elder individuals in the same country. We find that our
instruments are relevant, while its validity is also supported by falsification tests.

48. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Conclusions and policy implications
Policy implications of our results are quite relevant
Strategies that can enhance creativity and care for others wellbeing can play a
crucial role to increase social capital, active citizenship, subjective wellbeing and
resilience
Consider that:
1. School experiences can be crucial if teaching is not limited to face-to-face
transmission of concepts from the teacher to students while involving lab
activities where students can express their creativity and experience that
they can contribute to improve other people wellbeing with it
2. All other experiences stimulating creativity and care for others wellbeing
during young age can play an important role

49. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Conclusions and policy implications
Looking at life experiences along all age classes a more general policy implication
is that:
Institutions should define generativity targets for their policies
Fostering various types of grassroot initiatives such as community management
of local public and common goods can also contribute significantly to develop a
sense of generativity in all population categories

50. Leonardo Becchetti and Gianluigi Conzo, University of Rome Tor
Vergata
Conclusions and policy implications
Main conclusion?
Policymakers and the civil society should find mutual benefit in fixing as their
goal to create generative society and to use generativity indicators to evaluate
their choices and policies