1 / 17

Understanding Subjective Well-Being and Life Events: Insights from a Welfare Congress

Explore the impact of major life events on happiness and satisfaction levels based on data analysis from the Netherlands. Discover how people adapt to circumstances and differentiate between income shocks and life events.

brosh
Download Presentation

Understanding Subjective Well-Being and Life Events: Insights from a Welfare Congress

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Subjective well-being and life events Tineke de Jonge New Directions in Welfare Congress, Paris, 7 July 2011

  2. Two general subjective questions: • How satisfied are you with your life? • Do you consider yourself happy? • How satisfied are you with your life? • Do you consider yourself happy? Short history measurement SWB in the Netherlands • First Quality of Life Survey: 1974 • Domain specific questions

  3. Short history measurement SWB in the Netherlands • Do you consider yourself happy? • Very happy • Happy • Neither happy nor unhappy • Not very happy • Unhappy • How satisfied are you with your life? • Extraordinarily satisfied • Very satisfied • Satisfied • Fairly satisfied • Not very satisfied

  4. Adaptation based theories: • Major life events affect subjective well-being  SWB returns to normal after a period of adaptation Theories on well-being Standard assumption in economics: • Higher income  higher level of well-being  SWB should go up or down with income rise or fall

  5. Social Statistical Database (SSD) Civil register Income register SSD EU-SILC Labour force survey Employment register Unemployment register

  6. Dataset for analyses • Pooled survey data 2001 - 2008 • 59,000 respondents of 20 years and older • Enriched with data Social Statistical Database • Income shocks • Life events

  7. Income shocks Higher income comes with greater happiness Data for analyses • Yearly disposable household income ‘03-’08 from SSD • Price level 2008 • 36,000 respondents

  8. Income shocks Income class Size of income shock

  9. The effect of income shocks on SWB % happy people % satisfied people Income shock present year or year before

  10. Adaptation to changed circumstances Life events from SSD • Change in marital status Marrying Divorcing Being widowed • Change in socio-economic status Starting to work Becoming dependent on benefits (unemployment/disability) Becoming a pensioner

  11. Number of life events in SSD

  12. Share of happy people after life event Years past since life event

  13. A change in marital status and SWB Life event Years before life-event Years after life-event

  14. A change in marital status and SWB Life event Years before life-event Years after life-event

  15. A change in socio-economic status and SWB Life event Years before life-event Years after life-event

  16. A change in socio-economic status and SWB Life event Years before life-event Years after life-event

  17. Conclusions • People adapt to circumstances • Our data contain meaningful information • Happiness and satisfaction are assessed differently • People react differently to various types of life events • Changes in SWB are more likely due to life events than to income shocks Thank you for your attention!

More Related