IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dkn/econwp/eco_2009_03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why is the world getting older? The influence of happiness on mortality

Author

Listed:
  • Guven, Cahit
  • Saloumidis, Rudolph

Abstract

World life expectancy has risen by around 20 years in the last 50 years. This period has also witnessed rising happiness levels around the world suggesting that happiness might be one of the causes behind the decline in mortality. We investigate the relationship between happiness and mortality using the German Socio-Economic Panel. We consider doctor visits, self-reported health, and presence of chronic illness as health measures. After controlling for initial health conditions, we find that happiness extends life expectancy. 10 percent increase in happiness decreases probability of death by four percent, and this effect is more pronounced for men and younger people. Happiness plays a more important role for chronically ill people in decreasing mortality than for those who are not chronically ill. The positive influence of happiness on mortality can offset the negative impact of chronic illness. Marriage decreases mortality and this effect appears to work through increased happiness.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Guven, Cahit & Saloumidis, Rudolph, 2009. "Why is the world getting older? The influence of happiness on mortality," Working Papers eco_2009_03, Deakin University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:dkn:econwp:eco_2009_03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30106848/guven-whyisthe-2009.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Be Happy, Live Longer
      by Ariel Goldring in Free Market Mojo on 2010-07-11 01:24:25

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefano Bartolini, 2018. "Social capital as disease prevention," Department of Economics University of Siena 778, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    2. Van Landeghem, Bert, 2012. "A test for the convexity of human well-being over the life cycle: Longitudinal evidence from a 20-year panel," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 571-582.
    3. Bruce Headey & Jongsay Yong, 2019. "Happiness and Longevity: Unhappy People Die Young, Otherwise Happiness Probably Makes No Difference," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 713-732, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    happiness; mortality; health; chronic illness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dkn:econwp:eco_2009_03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xueli Tang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedeaau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.