The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This paper suggests that these two findings are consistent with the presence of relative income terms in the utility ...
We look for evidence of adaptation in well-being to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of a child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete, whereas this is not the case for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar to those in previous work on German panel data. Equally, the time profiles with life satisfaction as the ...
This paper uses data from ten waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine the effect of wages and job satisfaction on workers' future quit behaviour. Our results show that workers who report dissatisfaction with their jobs are statistically more likely to quit than those with higher levels of satisfaction. The cross-sectional distribution of job satisfaction responses thus contains information ...
This paper considers the psychological impact of past unemployment. Using 11 waves of German panel data, we show that life satisfaction is lower not only for the current unemployed (relative to the employed), but also for those with higher levels of past unemployment. However, the negative wellbeing effect of current unemployment is weaker for those who have been unemployed more often in the past. ...
This paper investigates the relationship between the subjective well-being of both the employed and unemployed and regional unemployment rates. While both employed and unemployed men suffer from regional unemployment, unemployed men are significantly less negatively affected. This is consistent with a social norm effect of unemployment in Germany. We find no evidence of such an offsetting effect for ...
The social norm of unemployment suggests that aggregate unemployment reduces the well-being of the employed, but has a far smaller effect on the unemployed. We use German panel data to reproduce this standard result, but then suggest that the appropriate distinction may not be between employment and unemployment, but rather between higher and lower levels of labour-market security, at least for men. ...
It is often observed that despite the famous prediction of Becker (1962) that firms will not pay for general training, German firms do in fact subsidize apprenticeship training. This paper examines two prominent solutions to this puzzle — “asymmetric information” and “mobility costs.” Our tests do not support the asymmetric information hypothesis, and, while they provide evidence consistent with a ...
Using panel data for twelve European countries over the period 1994-2001 we estimate the extent of state dependence in low pay. Controlling for observable and unobservable heterogeneity as well as the endogeneity of initial conditions we find positive, statistically significant state dependence in every single country. The magnitude of this effect varies by country, however this variation is not systematically ...
The income of married couples in which the husband is an immigrant aged 50 and older is compared to that of native-born Germans for the period 1995 to 1997. Immigrants are divided into households that arrived in Germany before and after 1984. Using Samples A, B, and D of the GSOEP, the income of immigrants is shown to be significantly lower than that of the native-born German population for households ...