IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/shf/wpaper/2018004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Finding meaning through work: eudaimonic well-being and job type in the US and UK

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Bryce

    (Department of Economics, University of Sheffield)

Abstract

Eudaimonic well-being is an important component of utility that reflects people’s preferences for having purpose and meaning in their lives. This paper presents analysis from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the UK Annual Population Survey (APS) to show that the extent to which people find their work meaningful is significantly determined by the type of job they have. Much of the existing literature in this area provides theoretical or qualitative evidence, or evidence from small scale surveys, to identify the aspects of a job most conducive to eudaimonic well-being. This paper is the first to establish large scale quantitative evidence of the effects of job type on eudaimonic well-being across the whole population, based on two large national datasets. I find that jobs that combine professional autonomy with having a direct social impact within the context of a trusting relationship are found to be the most meaningful and worthwhile, controlling for selection into these jobs. These findings have some interesting implications for how wages are set in different labour markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Bryce, 2018. "Finding meaning through work: eudaimonic well-being and job type in the US and UK," Working Papers 2018004, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2018004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps/articles/2018004
    File Function: First version, May 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew M. Bryce, 2021. "Weekend working in 21st century Britain: Does it matter for the well‐being of workers?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 89(6), pages 541-568, December.
    2. Andrew M. Bryce, 2019. "Weekend working in 21st century Britain:Does it matter for well-being?," Working Papers 2019007, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    3. Frank Martela, 2023. "The Normative Value of Making a Positive Contribution–Benefiting Others as a Core Dimension of Meaningful Work," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(4), pages 811-823, July.
    4. Diane Pelly, 2023. "Worker Well-Being and Quit Intentions: Is Measuring Job Satisfaction Enough?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 397-441, September.
    5. Nikolova, Milena & Cnossen, Femke, 2020. "What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Tobias Wolf & Maria Metzing & Richard E. Lucas, 2022. "Experienced Well-Being and Labor Market Status: The Role of Pleasure and Meaning," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 691-721, September.
    7. Michel Guillemin & Robin Nicholas, 2022. "Core Values at Work—Essential Elements of a Healthy Workplace," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-17, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    subjective well-being; eudaimonic well-being; meaningful work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B5 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

    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:shf:wpaper:2018004. 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: Mike Crabtree (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desheuk.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.