Age, Cohort, and the Slump of Job Satisfaction among West German Workers

Abstract

Using German panel data, I examine the long-term development in satisfaction with work from 1984 until 2001. As was the case for many other industrialized countries, Germany witnessed a sharp decline in workers’ self-reported job satisfaction in the late 1980s and 1990s, the reason of which is yet unknown. I present a cohort analysis of job satisfaction using various identifying assumptions to examine several explanations for this phenomenon: pure cohort effects, a decrease in self-reported job security, an increase in stress at work and a deterioration in other job conditions, and possible survey artefacts such as interviewer or repeated measurement effects. However, none of these can explain the overall decline in job satisfaction.