Car and happiness

There is much truth in the popular wisdom that the "car has changed our lives." Many of us, especially in America, cannot imagine our life without a car, and at the same time a car is often the second biggest purchase we make (after the house). Psychologically, owning a car is often a very important thing, especially for a male. But does it make him happy? Furthermore, do different cars contribute to overall happiness differently? For instance, are families with children happier with their lives if they have one big car or more than one car as opposed to just having one small car?

From a different (public policy) perspective, cars are substitutes for public transportation--the more cars there are, the lower the need for less public transportation. And there are many tradeoffs: Cars cost more, pollute more and create more congestion than public transportation. On the other hand, cars are often more convenient and offer more "freedom" than public transportation. Again, a question remains whether there is any difference in happiness between people who use cars and those who use public transportation. I will use the Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior and Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

One of the initial findings is that increasing the number of owned cars does not contribute to happiness. There were several studies about happiness and having a car and all of them operationalized possession of a car as a binary variable. I will use many more specific operationalizations of car ownership, such as age of car, price, make and model and number of cars in a household.