The accepted view among psychologists and economists alike is that economic well-being has a statistically significant but only weak effect on happiness/subjective well-being (SWB). This view is based almost entirely on weak relationships with household income. The paper uses household economic...

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,...

Self-reported measures of health are generally treated as weak measures of respondents' objective health status. On the other hand, most surveys use self-reported health to measure health status and to determine the effects of a range of other socio-economic characteristics of the local...

Well-being development at the end of life is often characterized by steep deteriorations, but individual differences in these terminal declines are substantial and not yet well understood. This study moved beyond the typical consideration of health predictors and explored the role of social...

Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic dimensions and societal repercussions, questions concerning the individual experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although many studies have documented...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. In this chapter, we argue that focusing on a phase of life during which this positive picture does not necessarily prevail promises to help us better understand between-person disparities in the...

The mental health and well-being of refugees are both prerequisites for and indicators of social integration. Using data from the first wave of a representative prospective panel of refugees living in Germany, we investigated how different living conditions, especially those subject to...