Following Changes in Living Conditions and Happiness in Post Communist Russia: the Russet Panel

This paper discusses the design of the Russian panel study used in this Volume. It is shown that a standard sampling procedure is used to get a representative sample of the Russian population. The questionnaire has been designed in such a way that the consequences of socio-economic changes in Russia can be observed while also reactions of the people are registered. It has also been shown that satisfaction varies considerably between people, across different domains of life and across time in Russia much more than in Western Democracies.Furthermore, we have shown that happiness and SWB questions do not measure the same. In Russia the first is more related to personal factors as the success of their marriage,while the second is more related to economic factors as the financial situation of the household. Given this difference we concluded that it makes more sense to study changes in satisfaction than happiness because the former is more connected to the socio-economic changes in the society.