Does Daily Sunshine Make You Happy? Subjective Measures of Well-Being and the Weather

This paper examines to what extent individual measures of well-being are correlated with daily weather patterns in the United Kingdom. Merging daily weather data into the British Household Panel Survey allows us to test whether measures of self-reported well-being are correlated with temperature, sunshine, rainfall and wind speed. We are able to make a strong case for causality due to randomness' of weather in addition to using methods that eliminate time-invariant individual-level heterogeneity. Results suggest that the effect of daily weather on measures of subjective well-being is negligible; although there is some evidence that sunshine affects job satisfaction negatively.