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Comparing Life Satisfaction

Author

Listed:
  • Arie Kapteyn
  • James P. Smith
  • Arthur Van Soest

Abstract

The authors analyze the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. They find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social contacts and family, health, and income. Among the four domains, social contacts and family have the highest impact on global life satisfaction, followed by job and daily activities and health. Income has the lowest impact. As in other work, they find that American response styles differ from the Dutch in that Americans are more likely to use the extremes of the scale (either very satisfied or very dissatisfied) than the Dutch, who are more inclined to stay in the middle of the scale. Although for both Americans and the Dutch, income is the least important determinant of global life satisfaction, it is more important in the U.S. than in The Netherlands. Indeed life satisfaction varies substantially more with income in the U.S. than in The Netherlands.

Suggested Citation

  • Arie Kapteyn & James P. Smith & Arthur Van Soest, 2009. "Comparing Life Satisfaction," Working Papers WR-623-1, RAND Corporation.
    • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-623-1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Jérôme Accardo, 2020. "Supplementing GDP: Some Recent Contributions from Official Social Statistics," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 517-518-5, pages 25-39.
    2. Martin Ravallion & Kristen Himelein & Kathleen Beegle, 2016. "Can Subjective Questions on Economic Welfare Be Trusted?," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(4), pages 697-726.
    3. Danilo Cavapozzi & Wei Han & Raffaele Miniaci, 2015. "Alternative weighting structures for multidimensional poverty assessment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(3), pages 425-447, September.
    4. Stefania Capecchi & Maria Iannario & Domenico Piccolo, 2012. "Modelling Job Satisfaction in AlmaLaurea Surveys," Working Papers 56, AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium.
    5. repec:dgr:rugsom:13018-eef is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Stefania Capecchi & Domenico Piccolo, 2016. "Investigating the determinants of job satisfaction of Italian graduates: a model-based approach," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 169-179, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    happiness; life satisfaction; vignettes; reporting bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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