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Why Does Unemployment Hurt the Employed? Evidence from the Life Satisfaction Gap between the Public and Private Sectors

High unemployment rates entail substantial costs to the working population in terms of reduced subjective well-being. This paper studies the importance of individual economic security, in particular job security, by exploiting sector-specific institutional differences in the exposure to economic shocks. Public servants have stricter dismissal protection and face a lower risk of their organization becoming ...

The Happiness Gains From Sorting and Matching in the Labor Market

Sorting of people on the labor market not only assures the most productive use of valuable skills but also generates individual utility gains if people experience an optimal match between job characteristics and their preferences. Based on individual data on subjective well-being it is possible to assess these latter gains from matching. We introduce a two-equation ordered probit model with endogenous ...

Self-selection and subjective-well being: Copula models with an application to public and private sector work

We discuss a new approach to specifying and estimating ordered probit models with endogenous switching, or with binary endogenous regressor, based on copula functions. These models provide a framework of analysis for self-selection in economic well-being equations, where assigment of regressors may be choice based, resulting from well-being maximization, rather than random. In an application to public ...

Self-selection models for public and private sector job satisfaction

We discuss a class of copula-based ordered probit models with endogenous switching. Such models can be useful for the analysis of self-selection in subjective well-being equations in general, and job satisfaction in particular, where assignment of regressors may be endogenous rather than random, resulting from individual maximization of well-being. In an application to public and private sector job ...

Can Happiness Change? The Short- and Long-Term Relationship Between Subjective Well-Being and External Circumstances (Dissertation)

The development of subjective well-being

Subjective well-being (SWB) encompasses cognitive components such as life satisfaction and affective components such as positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). This chapter provides an overview of the current state of research on the development of these different components of SWB, focusing primarily on describing and explaining the development of SWB across adulthood. Cross-sectional and longitudinal ...

Does it Really Feel the Same? Changes in Life Satisfaction Following Repeated Life Events

Unemployment, divorce, and marriage are common life events for most people in Western societies. In a longitudinal study, the authors investigated how these life events affect life satisfaction when they occur repeatedly. Data came from the German Socio-Economic Panel, a large-scale representative panel study, and were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Results showed that, in general, life satisfaction ...

Age Differences in Loneliness From Late Adolescence to Oldest Old Age

Contrary to common stereotypes, loneliness is not restricted to old age but can occur at any life stage. In this study, we used data from a large, nationally representative German study (N = 16,132) to describe and explain age differences in loneliness from late adolescence to oldest old age. The age distribution of loneliness followed a complex nonlinear trajectory, with elevated loneliness levels ...

Subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: A meta-analysis

Previous research has shown that major life events can have short- and long-term effects on subjective well-being (SWB). The present meta-analysis examines (a) whether life events have different effects on affective and cognitive well-being and (b) how the rate of adaptation varies across different life events. Longitudinal data from 188 publications (313 samples, N = 65,911) were integrated to describe ...

The Prospective Effect of Life Satisfaction on Life Events

Life satisfaction (LS) is prospectively associated with the occurrence of several major events in work and family life. Analyzing longitudinal data from three nationally representative panel studies (Ns between 2,321 and 18,692), the authors found that higher LS is associated with a higher likelihood of marriage and childbirth, and with a lower likelihood of marital separation, job loss, starting a ...