Life satisfaction and the economic and social characteristics of neighbourhoods

This paper uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to investigate the association between neighbourhood effects and life satisfaction. We find that neighbourhood measures of social support and interaction and the absence of socio-economic deprivation are positively and significantly correlated with individual life satisfaction. Neighbourhood fixed effects, however, explain only an additional 1.5 to 2.5% of the variance in life satisfaction over the 14% explained by individual characteristics.

Avowed Happiness in Confucian Asia: Ascertaining its Distribution,Patterns, and Sources

This study reviewed three philosophical accounts of happiness, and then tested those accounts with the Asiabarometer surveys conducted in six Confucian societies during the summer of 2006. Statistical analyses of these surveys reveal that East Asians tend to experience happiness to a greater extent when they experience enjoyment together with achievement and/or satisfaction. The preponderance of such multi-dimensional conceptions in all those societies poses a direct challenge to a single dimensional account of happiness in the West. The analyses also reveal that positive assessments of interpersonal relationships matter more than the amount of knowledge or wealth in living a happy life in Confucian societies.

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Life Goals Matter to Happiness: A Revision of Set-Point Theory

Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP), this paper provides evidence that life goals matter substantially to subjective well-being (SWB). Non-zero sum goals, which include commitment to family, friends and social and political involvement, promote life satisfaction. Zero sum goals, including commitment to career success and material gains, appear detrimental to life satisfaction. Finding that conscious life goals matter can potentially make an important contribution to SWB theory. The most widely accepted theory—set-point or dynamic equilibrium theory—essentially claims that set-points are near-automatic consequences of hereditary characteristics, including personality traits. Life goals play no role in these theories and major life events are viewed as having only a transitory effect. The SOEP panel data show that, over a 15–20 year period, non-trivial minorities record substantial changes in their set-points. This paper shows linkages between these changes and (a) the personality traits of extraversion, neuroticism and internal locus of control and (b) choice of life goals.

Cross-National Variation in Individual Life Satisfaction: Effects of National Wealth, Human Development, and Environmental Conditions

This study adds to the literature on subjective well-being and life satisfaction by exploring variation in individual life satisfaction across countries. Understanding whether and how individual life satisfaction varies across countries is important because if the goal of development is to increase well-being, we must identify the causes of well-being in different national and regional contexts. Using hierarchical linear modeling techniques, I test the hypothesis that individual well-being does vary across countries, and that national wealth, human development and environmental conditions explain this variation. I also test whether the effects of individual characteristics on life satisfaction (including age, marital status, education, income, employment status, and sex) vary across countries, and which country level characteristics explain these variations. Using individual level data from the World Values Survey, I find that there is significant variation in life satisfaction across countries. There is also significant variation in the slopes of individual predictors of life satisfaction across countries and regions. Regional differences in the effects of individual characteristics on life satisfaction explain most of the between country variation in life satisfaction. This indicates that universal development indicators may not adequately reflect differences in life satisfaction across countries, and that development measurements should better reflect regional differences.

Subjective Well-being Among Young People in Transition to Adulthood

This study used a nationally representative sample of young people in Germany from the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine how demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the young persons and their parents, personality traits of the young persons, quality and quantity of relationships, the parent's level of life satisfaction, and other measures of satisfaction for the young person are related to the initial assessment of life satisfaction by the individual at the critical point of transition from adolescence to adulthood. The results indicated that consistency existed across different domains of satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with life and satisfaction with grades. A strong pattern of association was also observed between the subjective well-being of the adolescents and variables that measured different dimensions of the quality and quantity of interpersonal relationships, including relationships with parents.

Personal Values as Mitigating Factors in the Link Between Income and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Using data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey, we examine the link between income, reference income and life satisfaction across Western Europe. We find that whilst there is a strong positive relationship between income and life satisfaction, reference or comparison income exerts a strong negative influence. Interestingly, our results confirm the importance of personal values and beliefs not only as predictors of subjective well-being, but also as mitigating factors in the relationship between income, reference income and life satisfaction. While our findings provide additional empirical support for the relative utility hypothesis, they are also consistent with Rojas’ (J Econ Psychol 28:1–14, 2007) Conceptual-Referent-Theory (CRT), which is based on the premise that the salience of income and comparison income depends on one’s intrinsic values and personal beliefs.

Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Turkey

This research aims to investigate life satisfaction and happiness in Turkey. It extends the previous researches on subjective well-being (SWB) for Turkey by considering both happiness and life satisfaction. The previous researches for Turkey are local studies, and their findings cannot be generalized to the population of Turkish society. Given these facts, the factors that shape individual happiness and life satisfaction amongst Turkish people are determined using a representative survey of sociocultural and political change, World Values Survey (WVS). Some results obtained in this study are similar to typical findings such as a negative age effect, positive influences of income and health status, and a negative effect of unemployment. Contrary to the expectations, middle education has a negative direct effect on life satisfaction among females, and the upper education level is insignificant in the life satisfaction model. By comparing the correlates of happiness and life satisfaction across different years, this research aims to provide insights for policy makers and professionals to improve the perceived lives of Turkish people.

Money Does not Buy Happiness: Or Does It? A Reassessment Based on the Combined Effects of Wealth,Income and Consumption

The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries—Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands—to provide a reassessment of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income.

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction Ratings; Multiple Group Invariance Analysis Across Scales with Different Response Format

The current study evaluates three hypothesized models on subjective well-being, comprising life domain ratings (LDR), overall satisfaction with life (OSWL), and overall dissatisfaction with life (ODWL), using structural equation modeling (SEM). A sample of 1,310 volunteering students, randomly assigned to six conditions, rated their overall life (dis)satisfaction and their (dis)satisfaction with six different life domains. Each condition used one of six response formats, differing in (1) orientation (horizontal vs. vertical), and (2) anchoring (0 to 10, −5 to +5, and Not numbered). The results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) support a six-factor model of LDR based on satisfaction or dissatisfaction items. However, our findings indicate that the kind of response format used to obtain satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings can affect the factor loadings. Our results indicate that the proposed models of OSWL, and ODWL fit the data well, and are able to predict OSWL and ODWL, respectively. Moreover, among six life domains, which figure as the latent variables in our models, psychological well-being was found to be the strongest predictor of both OSWL and ODWL.

Enclaves, language, and the location choice of migrants

Empirical studies in the migration literature have shown that enclaves (networks) negatively affect the language proficiency of migrants. Most of these studies do not address the choice of location as a function of language skills. Using data on Mexican migration to the US, we show that migrants choose smaller networks as their English language proficiency improves.

The relevance of social interactions on housing satisfaction

For most individuals, housing is the largest consumption and investment item of their lifetime and, as a result, housing satisfaction is an important component of their quality of life. The purpose of this paper then is to investigate the determinants of individual housing satisfaction as a particular domain of satisfaction with life as a whole, examining the effects of individual and household attributes (predictive), housing characteristics (hedonic), and more importantly, of social interactions originated in one's residential neighbourhood. To do so, we model housing as a composite commodity that satisfies dwelling needs, as well as other intangibles such as familiar relationships and socio-status aspects. We use the Survey of Living Conditions and Poverty (Spain). Specifically, using a self-reported measure of housing satisfaction, we estimate ordered probit models searching for the empirical specification that provides the best fit accounting for divergences driven by aspirations defined in the own household (internal norm), and by social comparisons (peer-effect or external norm).

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: Towards an Internationally Acceptable National Success Indicator

Amidst increasing attention to happiness studies by economists, the New Economics Foundation launched in July 2006 the Happy Planet Index (Marks et al. 2006). This is the ratio of the average happy life years (HLY) to the per capita ecological footprint of the country concerned. HLY is in turn the product of the average happiness (or life satisfaction) index and the life expectancy index. Some essential revisions to this index are proposed to reach an internationally acceptable national success indicator that aims positively at long and happy lives but negatively at the external costs of environmental disruption. Hopefully, this ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ will lead to some re-orientation of both the market and national governments towards something more fundamentally valuable.

The changing nature of wage inequality

The paper reviews recent developments in the literature on wage inequality with a particular focus on why inequality growth has been particularly concentrated in the top end of the wage distribution over the last 15 years. Several possible institutional and demand-side explanations are discussed for the secular growth in wage inequality in the United States and other advanced industrialized countries.

A longitudinal analysis of the impact of health shocks on the wealth of elders

We investigate the impact of health shocks on wealth, using all four waves of the Health and Retirement Study, and estimate not only the short-term effect but also the long-term effect of health shocks on wealth of the elderly. We find that new health events lower wealth in elders during the period in which such health shocks occur, but the impact tends to disappear over time. We also find that health shocks result in greater wealth depletion when they occur later in life. Together with existing health problems, the overall impact of health problems on wealth increases over time.

The Quality of Life in Japan

This study is part of a collaborative project examining the quality of life in Confucian societies in Asia. Our major findings suggest that, when our sixteen specific life domains are grouped into three life spheres, namely, material, post-material, and public, the Japanese people tend to be most satisfied with the post-material sphere of life and least satisfied with the public sphere of life such as the condition of environment and welfare system. In searching the direct, independent effects of demographics, lifestyles, value priorities, and domain assessments on the quality of life, none of the public life domain assessments shows a significant impact on the quality of life, while friendships and spiritual life in the post-material sphere of life are an important determinant. Equally notable is the finding that neither educational attainment nor household income contributes significantly to the experience of subjective well-being. Leading a global lifestyle also affects positively the quality of life. Finally, being married and satisfaction with marital life appear to be powerful and prevalent influence on the quality of life in Japan.

The Quality of Life in Hong Kong

The AsiaBarometer of 1,000 respondents shows that Hong Kong people have a great desire for materialistic attainment, and such an emphasis on materialism bodes ill for their quality of life. Negative assessments of the public life sphere, which encompasses the natural environment, the social welfare system, and the democratic system, also detract from the experiences of happiness, enjoyment, and accomplishment in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, access to digital communication devices helps Hong Kong people to experience a greater quality of life.

Ways by which Comparable Income Affects Life Satisfaction in Hong Kong

Proponents of social equality attribute low life satisfaction to income inequality in society, an inequality which occurs when most people have relatively low income and only a few have high income. In contrast, range-frequency theory and other social comparison theories predict that when most people have low income, they are satisfied because of the absence of relative deprivation among themselves. This prediction essentially suggests that that the size of the group of individuals with comparable income (i.e., income parity) sustains their life satisfaction. This theoretical prediction, however, does not consider their desire to be distinctive. By incorporating the notion of optimal distinctiveness, the size of income parity may have a quadratic effect on the individual’s life satisfaction. This is a hypothesis that receives support from the present study in Hong Kong, China. The study finds a saddle point of income parity size associated with the lowest life satisfaction, other things being equal. Furthermore, middle-income individuals have income parity size equal to or above this saddle point. They would have higher life satisfaction with increased income parity size, which therefore leads to a more enlarged income inequality. Others, however, may have higher life satisfaction with reduced income parity size. Hence, reducing income inequality would have mixed effects on people with different levels of income.

Determinants of business success: an examination of Asian-owned businesses in the USA

Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, we investigate the performance of Asian-owned businesses. Using regression estimates and a special non-linear decomposition technique, we explore the role that class resources, such as financial capital and human capital, play in contributing to the relative success of Asian businesses. We find that Asian-owned businesses are more successful than white-owned businesses for two main reasons—Asian owners have high levels of human capital and their businesses have substantial start-up capital. Using detailed information on both the owner and the firm, we estimate the explanatory power of several additional factors.

The Housing Domain of Quality of Life and Life Satisfaction in the Spontaneous Settlements on the Tehran Metropolitan Fringe

The aim of this article is to survey the spontaneous settlements on the Tehran Metropolitan Fringe (TMF), to determine the different housing sub-domains of quality of life (QOL), to survey overall life satisfaction and to determine the extent to which overall life satisfaction is explained by the components of the housing domain of QOL in these spontaneous settlements. Three spontaneous settlements on the TMF were selected by stratified random sampling method. Household interviews were conducted to gather the needed data. Nineteen indicators were selected to reflect the housing sub-domains of QOL. A factor analysis identified seven housing sub-domains of QOL: housing consolidation, housing amenities, housing space, housing quality, housing basic services, housing durability and security of tenure. In all three settlements surveyed, an inverse relationship was found between satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Very few residents expressed a neutral view about life satisfaction in the settlements surveyed. In all three settlements surveyed, respondents felt they were more satisfied with their life in their previous settlements. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the extent to which overall life satisfaction is explained by the seven extracted components of the housing domain of QOL. The results indicated that there is a direct relationship between the main reasons for migration to these settlements and the housing sub-domains of QOL.

Forecasting German mortality using panel data procedures

Reliable forecasts of life expectancies are of importance for the financial stability of social security systems and the life insurance industry. A discrete-time stochastic process and a continuous-time stochastic process are proposed to model the dynamics of German mortality rates from which life expectancies are calculated. More precisely, a panel data model is utilized, which distinguishes between a common time effect and a common age effect. The model is easy to fit, yields interpretable parameters, and allows for a simple analysis of the forecast error. The main applications of the model are the forecast of mortality rates—and the resulting life expectancies—and the pricing of mortality derivatives.