Does life-satisfaction inequality measure societal inequality? A focal-value-rounding critique
Why happiness surveys may be measuring rounding habits, not actual inequality
When people rate their life satisfaction on 0–10 scales, many simplify their answer by choosing only 0, 5, or 10—a pattern that distorts measurements of inequality across countries. This "focal-value rounding" inflates measured inequality by about half the typical cross-country range, yet because the distortion is similar everywhere, country rankings survive mostly intact.
Researchers use life-satisfaction inequality as a way to measure whether societies are truly unequal in how well people live. If the metric is partly contaminated by how people round their answers rather than genuine differences in wellbeing, policy makers and economists could be acting on incomplete information—though this study shows the damage may be less severe than feared, since the distortion affects all countries roughly the same way.