Loneliness has traditionally been studied on the individual level. This study is one of the first to systematically describe and explaindifferences in loneliness on a fine-grained regional level. Using data from the nationally representative German Socio-EconomicPanel Study (N ¼17,602), we mapped the regional distribution of loneliness across Germany and examined whether regionaldifferences in loneliness ...
IntroductionEmpirical evidence on Ronald Inglehart's theory of value change shows that subsequent generations show a decline in values of physical and economic security (materialism) in favor of an increase in values of self-expression and autonomy (postmaterialism).MethodsWe investigate in a pre-registered study whether Inglehart's theory also applies to partnership, such that millennials think less ...
Grandparents act as the third biggest care giver besides day care and parental care for children below the age of 6 in most OECD countries. Despite its relevance, the effects of child care provided by grandparents on child and parental outcomes have received little attention in the literature. We investigate the potential impact of grandparental care on children's...
In most cross-national research on Life Satisfaction (LS) an implicit assumption appears to be that the correlates of LS are the same the world over; ‘one size fits all’. Using data from the World Values Survey (1999–2014), we question this assumption by assessing the effects of differing personal values/life priorities on LS in five world regions: the West, Latin America, the Asian-Confucian region, ...
Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper investigates how pro-active time-use (e.g., in sports/arts/socializing) relates to subjective well-being of the unemployed and their probability of finding a new job. Allowing for a variety of socio-demographic and -economic observed characteristics, we find that pro-activity is negatively associated with the well-being ...
People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and—as a driver of migration—carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examined whether the ...
Following the fall of the Iron Curtain it was important for the acceptance of the new economic and political system that the former Communist elites did not maintain their privileges, and that protesters, who helped to overturn the old system, improved their situation. With newly available panel data on East Germany’s socialist past, the German Democratic Republic, we analyze how former Communist elites, ...
Introduction: Control beliefs can protect against age-related declines in functioning. It is unclear whether neighborhood characteristics shape how much control people perceive over their life. This article studies associations of neighborhood characteristics with control beliefs of residents of a diverse metropolitan area (Berlin, Germany). Methods: We combine self-report data about perceptions of ...
Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people’s emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large panel data set, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks indicate ...
Although individuals vary in how optimistic they are about the future, one assumption that researchers make is that optimism is sensitive to changes in life events and circumstances. We examined how optimism and pessimism changed across the lifespan and in response to life events in three large panel studies (combined N = 74,886). In the American and Dutch samples, we found that optimism increased ...