Using life satisfaction as a direct measure of individual utility has become popular in the empirical economic literature. In this context, it is crucial to know what circumstances or changes the measure is sensitive to. Is life satisfaction a volatile concept that is affected by minor changes...

This paper applies semiparametric regression models using penalized splines to investigate the profile of well-being over the life span. Splines have the advantage that they do not require a priori assumptions about the form of the curve. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)...

In contrast to unemployment, the effect of non-participation and parttime employment on subjective well-being has much less frequently been the subject of economists' investigations. In Germany, many women with dependent children are involuntarily out of the labor force or in part-time...

Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2008, this paper analyses the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work,...

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...

Despite political efforts, balancing work and family life is still challenging. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of firm level interventions that seek to reduce the work-life conflict. The focus is on how a specific workplace policy, namely childcare support, affects the...

This paper uses a panel of German individuals and highly granular pollution data to test if air pollution affects adults' well-being indirectly through the health of their children. Results show that ozone decreases the well-being of individuals with children while not affecting persons without...

We study the effectiveness, spillovers, and well-being effects of low emission zones in Germany, an emission-intensity-based driving restriction rapidly growing in popularity. Using regression discontinuity and group-time difference-in-differences designs, we show that previous estimates of the...

Subjective Well-Being has increasingly been studied by several economists. This paper fits in that literature but takes into account that there are different aspects of life such as health, financial situation, and job. We call them domains. In this paper, we consider Subjective Well-Being as a...

We link life-satisfaction data to inequality of the pre-government income distribution at the regional level, to estimate the degree of inequality aversion. In addition, we investigate whether a reduction in inequality by the state increases individual well-being. We find that Germans are...