In Pursuit of Happiness: Understanding Subjective Well-Being of Citizens from the City Attributes

Over the past years, economists have become interested in understanding happiness to explore questions in economics, policy, and management. This new discipline, known as the happiness economics, studies the well-being of a society as opposed to traditional welfare. It has the potential to impact significantly on the primary goal of a government and policy-makers in creating a satisfactory life for the citizens. However, due to the expenses associated with census-based data collection, the granularity and frequency of such information are often limited, making it difficult for local authorities to capture an accurate picture of citizens' subjective well-being. In this paper, we examine whether certain city attributes, such as citizen mobility and functional facets of neighbourhoods can offer subtle indication of citizens' well-being. In doing so, we characterise the London city using two attributes: the urban mobility flow acquired from an automated fare collection dataset for public transports and the functional facets of London gathered from a Point of Interests (PoIs) dataset. We then study the correlation of this characterisation with the census-based indices of the subjective well-being. Our observations suggest that these city attributes affect the subjective well-being and can uncover hidden dynamics across neighbourhoods of varying social standings. For example, we find that the happiness of high income neighbourhoods is affected by the limited mobility and functional facets.