Substance use risk profiles and associations with early substance use in adolescence

We examined whether anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness, sensation seeking, and impulsivity (i.e., revised version of the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale) would be related to the lifetime prevalence and age of onset of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use, and to polydrug use in early adolescence. Baseline data of a broader effectiveness study were used from 3,783 early adolescents aged 11–15 years. Structural equation models showed that hopelessness and sensation seeking were indicative of ever-used alcohol, tobacco or cannabis and for the use of more than one substance. Furthermore, individuals with higher levels of hopelessness had a higher chance of starting to use alcohol or cannabis at an earlier age, but highly anxiety sensitive individuals were less likely to start using alcohol use at a younger age. Conclusively, early adolescents who report higher levels of hopelessness and sensation seeking seem to be at higher risk for an early onset of substance use and poly substance use

Life Satisfaction, Household Income and Personality Theory

We show that personality traits mediate the e ect of income on Life Satisfaction. The e ect is strong in the case of Neuroticism, which measures the sensitivity to threat and punishment, in both the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socioeconomic Panel. Neuroticism increases the usually observed concavity of the relationship: Individuals with higher Neuroticism score enjoy income more than those with lower score if they are poorer and enjoy income less if they are richer. When the interaction between income and neuroticism is introduced, income does not have signi cant e ect on his own. To interpret the results, we present a simple model where we assume that (i) Life Satisfaction is dependent from the gap between aspired and realized income, and this is modulated by Neuroticism and (ii) income increases in aspirations with a slope less than unity, so that the gap between aspired and realized income increase with aspirations. From the estimation of this model we argue that poorer tend to overshoot in their aspiration, while rich tend to under-shoot. The estimation of the model also shows substantial effect of traits on income

A reassessment of the relationship between GDP and life satisfaction

Determining the relation between life satisfaction and aggregate income at country level has been problematic, because cross-country and times-series analysis generally give different conclusions. Here we analyze this relation without imposing any polynomial structure to the estimated model and eliminating potentially confounding country-specific factors. We show the existence of a bliss point in the interval between 26,000$and 30,000$ (2005 in PPP) in relationship between individual life satisfaction and GDP. An almost identical result is found when the relationship between aggregate income of Western European regions and life satisfaction of their residents is analyzed: in this case, data suggest a bliss point between 30,000$and 33,000$. In both samples, we find first evidence of a decreasing level of life satisfaction after the bliss points. Therefore, the analysis overall shows the existence of an hump-shaped pattern between GDP and life satisfaction. We discuss possible explanations of the hump-shaped pattern linked to external effects of the aggregate income on life satisfaction due, for example, to habit formation and income comparison and present an econometric test of this potential explanation based on some recent findings of the ve-factor personality theory