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Subjective well-being and the individual material situation in Central Europe: A Bayesian network approach
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
The objective of this paper is to explore the associations between the subjective well-being (SWB) and the subjective and objective measures of the individual material situation in the four post-communist countries of Central Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). The material situation is measured by income, relative income compared to others, relative income compared to one’s own past, perceived economic strain, financial problems, material deprivation, and housing problems. Our analysis is based on empirical data from the third wave of European Quality of Life Study conducted in 2011. Bayesian networks as a graphical representation of the relations between SWB and the material situation have been constructed in five versions. The models have been assessed using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and SWB prediction accuracy, and compared\nwith Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR). Expert knowledge, as well as three different algorithms (greedy, Gobnilp, and Tree-augmented Naive Bayes) were used for learning the network structures. Network parameters were learned using the EM algorithm. Parameters based on OLR were learned for a version of the expert model. The Gobnilp model, the Markov equivalent to the greedy model, is BIC optimal. The OLR predicts SWB slightly better than the other models. We conclude that the objective material conditions' influence on SWB is rather indirect, through the subjective situational assessment of various aspects related to the individual material conditions.
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Bayesian Networks for the Analysis of Subjective Well-Being
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
We use Bayesian Networks to model the influence of diverse socio-economic factors on subjective well-being and their interrelations. The classical statistical analysis aims at finding significant explanatory variables, while Bayesian Networks can also help sociologists to explain and visualize the problem in its complexity. Using Bayesian Networks the sociologists may get a deeper insight into the interplay of all measured factors and their influence on the variable of a special interest. In the paper we present several Bayesian Network models -- each being optimal from a different perspective. We show how important it is to pay a special attention to a local structure of conditional probability tables. Finally, we present results of an experimental evaluation of the suggested approaches based on real data from a large international survey. We believe that the suggested approach is well applicable to other sociological problems and that Bayesian Networks represent a new valuable tool for sociological research.
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Employing Bayesian Networks for Subjective Well-being Prediction
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
This contribution aims at using Bayesian networks for modelling the relations between the individual subjective well-being (SWB) and the individual material situation. The material situation is approximated by subjective measures (perceived economic strain, subjective evaluation of the income relative to most people in the country and to own past) and objective measures (household’s income, material deprivation, financial problems and housing defects). The suggested Bayesian network represents the relations among SWB and the variables approximating the material situation. The structure is established based on the expertise gained from literature, whereas the parameters are learnt based on empirical data from 3rd edition of European Quality of Life Study for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia conducted in 2011. Prediction accuracy of SWB is tested and compared with two benchmark models whose structures are learnt using Gobnilp software and a greedy algorithm built in Hugin software. SWB prediction accuracy of the expert model is 66,83%, which is significantly different from no information rate of 55,16%. It is slightly lower than the two machine learnt benchmark models.
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