Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament with information on total earnings including outside income, this paper analyzes the politicians' wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for selection into politics, we find a positive PWG...

By age 77 a plurality of women in wealthy Western societies are widows. Comparing older (aged 70+) married women to widows in the American Time Use Survey 2003-18 and linking the data to the Current Population Survey allow inferring the short- and longer-term effects of an arguably exogenous...

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians' outside earnings. In our framework, politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent...

This paper employs a multidimensional approach for the measurement of well-being at the top of the distribution using German SOEP micro data. Besides income as traditional indicator for material well-being, we include health as a proxy for nonmaterial quality of life as well as self-reported...

We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard, et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on life-satisfaction are positive...

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for 'children' who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of...

We analyze how well-being is related to working time preferences and hours mismatch. Self-reported measures of life satisfaction are used as an empirical approximation of true wellbeing. Our results indicate that well-being is generally lower among workers with working time mismatch....

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

Quality of life and satisfaction with life are of particular importance for individuals as well as for society concerning the "demographic change" with now longer retirement periods. This study will contribute to the life satisfaction discussion and quantifies life satisfaction and pattern of...

We 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. We find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social...