IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp14270.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Happiness, Domains of Life Satisfaction, Perceptions, and Valuation Differences Across Genders

Author

Listed:
  • Milovanska-Farrington, Stefani

    (University of Tampa)

  • Farrington, Stephen

    (University of Tampa)

Abstract

Happiness is strongly associated with goal attainment, productivity, mental health and suicidal risk. This paper examines the effect of satisfaction with areas of life on subjective well-being (SWB), the importance of relative perceptions compared to absolute measures in predicting overall life satisfaction, and differences in the domains of life which have the greatest impact on happiness of men and women. The findings suggest that relative perceptions have a large statistically significant effect on SWB. Satisfaction with family life and health have the largest while satisfaction with income has the lowest impact on overall SWB for both genders. Work satisfaction is more important for men than for women, whereas partner's happiness is more valued by female respondents. Satisfaction with household compared to personal income has a larger effect on SWB in all subsamples except employed women. Understanding the perceived and factual determinants of happiness has urgent implications in the context of the detrimental impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on SWB.

Suggested Citation

  • Milovanska-Farrington, Stefani & Farrington, Stephen, 2021. "Happiness, Domains of Life Satisfaction, Perceptions, and Valuation Differences Across Genders," IZA Discussion Papers 14270, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp14270.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keynes, John Maynard, 1919. "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number keynes1919.
    2. Rafael Di Tella & Robert J. MacCulloch & Andrew J. Oswald, 2003. "The Macroeconomics of Happiness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 809-827, November.
    3. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2004. "Well-being over time in Britain and the USA," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1359-1386, July.
    4. Nicolas Loewe & Mehdi Bagherzadeh & Luis Araya-Castillo & Claudio Thieme & Joan Batista-Foguet, 2014. "Life Domain Satisfactions as Predictors of Overall Life Satisfaction Among Workers: Evidence from Chile," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 71-86, August.
    5. Bruce Headey & Mark Wooden, 2004. "The Effects of Wealth and Income on Subjective Well‐Being and Ill‐Being," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(s1), pages 24-33, September.
    6. Stutzer, Alois, 2004. "The role of income aspirations in individual happiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 89-109, May.
    7. Gregori Baetschmann & Alexander Ballantyne & Kevin E. Staub & Rainer Winkelmann, 2020. "feologit: A new command for fitting fixed-effects ordered logit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(2), pages 253-275, June.
    8. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    9. Valerie Møller & Willem Saris, 2001. "The Relationship between Subjective Well-being and Domain Satisfactions in South Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 97-114, July.
    10. Bjørnskov, Christian & Dreher, Axel & Fischer, Justina A.V. & Schnellenbach, Jan & Gehring, Kai, 2013. "Inequality and happiness: When perceived social mobility and economic reality do not match," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 75-92.
    11. Alesina, Alberto & Di Tella, Rafael & MacCulloch, Robert, 2004. "Inequality and happiness: are Europeans and Americans different?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2009-2042, August.
    12. Ruut Veenhoven, 1996. "Developments in satisfaction-research," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 1-46, January.
    13. William Robert Reed, 2015. "On the Practice of Lagging Variables to Avoid Simultaneity," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(6), pages 897-905, December.
    14. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Hypertension and happiness across nations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 218-233, March.
    15. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    16. Mary C. Daly & Daniel J. Wilson, 2009. "Happiness, Unhappiness, and Suicide: An Empirical Assessment," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 539-549, 04-05.
    17. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    18. Carol Graham & Andrew Felton, 2006. "Inequality and happiness: Insights from Latin America," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 4(1), pages 107-122, April.
    19. Richard Lucas & Andrew Clark, 2006. "Do People Really Adapt To Marriage?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 405-426, November.
    20. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2006. "Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, Winter.
    22. Mariano Rojas, 2006. "Life satisfaction and satisfaction in domains of life: is it a simple relationship?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 467-497, November.
    23. Kristoffersen, Ingebjørg, 2018. "Great expectations: Education and subjective wellbeing," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 64-78.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefani Milovanska-Farrington & Stephen Farrington, 2021. "Happiness, Domains of Life Satisfaction, Perceptions, and Valuation Differences across Genders," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1128, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Milovanska-Farrington, Stefani & Farrington, Stephen, 2021. "More and none? Children and parental well-being: A bimodal outcome from an instrumental variable approach," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 225-243.
    3. Juncal Cuñado & Fernando Gracia, 2012. "Does Education Affect Happiness? Evidence for Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 185-196, August.
    4. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2006. "Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590436, HAL.
    5. O'Donnell, Gus & Oswald, Andrew J., 2015. "National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 59-70.
    6. Chun-Hung Lin & Suchandra Lahiri & Ching-Po Hsu, 2014. "Happiness and Regional Segmentation: Does Space Matter?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 57-83, February.
    7. Diriwaechter, Patric & Shvartsman, Elena, 2018. "The anticipation and adaptation effects of intra- and interpersonal wage changes on job satisfaction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 116-140.
    8. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2013. "Happiness economics," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 35-60, March.
    9. Leonardo Becchetti & Alessandra Pelloni, 2013. "What are we learning from the life satisfaction literature?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 60(2), pages 113-155, June.
    10. Mentzakis, Emmanouil & Moro, Mirko, 2009. "The poor, the rich and the happy: Exploring the link between income and subjective well-being," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 147-158, January.
    11. Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa & Graham, Carol, 2018. "Local neighbors as positives, regional neighbors as negatives: Competing channels in the relationship between others’ income, health, and happiness," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 263-276.
    12. Liu, Zhiqiang & Shang, Qingyan, 2012. "Individual well-being in urban China: The role of income expectations," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 833-849.
    13. Kavetsos, Georgios & Szymanski, Stefan, 2010. "National well-being and international sports events," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 158-171, April.
    14. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    15. Di Tella, Rafael & Haisken-De New, John & MacCulloch, Robert, 2010. "Happiness adaptation to income and to status in an individual panel," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 834-852, December.
    16. Di Tella, Rafael & MacCulloch, Robert, 2008. "Gross national happiness as an answer to the Easterlin Paradox?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 22-42, April.
    17. Filiz Gülal & Adam Ayaita, 2020. "The Impact of Minimum Wages on Well-Being: Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in Germany," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(7), pages 2669-2692, October.
    18. Gregor Gonza & Anže Burger, 2017. "Subjective Well-Being During the 2008 Economic Crisis: Identification of Mediating and Moderating Factors," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1763-1797, December.
    19. Ozan Eksi & Neslihan Kaya, 2017. "Life Satisfaction and Keeping Up with Other Countries," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 199-228, February.
    20. Biancotti, Claudia & D'Alessio, Giovanni, 2007. "Inequality and Happiness," AICCON Working Papers 45-2007, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    perceptions; satisfaction with areas of life; subjective well-being; values; gender differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    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:iza:izadps:dp14270. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.