State Capacity and Subjective Well-Being in Early Modern Spain

We assess the Spanish Monarchy’s ability to implement its policies using an output measure – the distribution of the Bull of the Crusade – and examine how shifts in state capacity influenced subjective well-being. In a religious society such as early modern Spain, spiritual satisfaction serves as a measure of subjective well-being. Purchasing the Bull reduced fear of purgatory and therefore death anxiety and thus increased life satisfaction. Our measure of subjective well-being – the logarithmic ratio of bulls sold to the population – indicates whether spiritual satisfaction was attained. According to this indicator, subjective well-being declined in the late 1570s and 1580s during years of severe financial crisis, in the 1640s during the Catalan Revolt, and collapsed during Spain’s War of Succession (1701 to 1714) and its aftermath. Reductions in state capacity coincided with decreases in spiritual satisfaction, while demand for bulls remained relatively stable over time. Declines in state capacity appear to be the primary factor behind these decreases in spiritual satisfaction and, consequently, lower subjective well-being.