Using a longitudinal household panel dataset in the United Kingdom, where most interviews are conducted in September each year, we are able to show that the attacks of September 11 resulted in lower levels of subjective well-being for those interviewed after that date in 2001 compared to those...

Using Kahneman and Schkade's (1998) idea of focusing illusion, this paper attempts to explain why having children does not always bring us the kind of happiness we anticipated to have before our decision to having them.

What causes us to vote and what do we get out of it? We approach these questions using data on voting and subjective well-being (SWB) from a large household panel dataset in the UK. We find some evidence that SWB can affect voting intention but no evidence that the results of three recent...

This paper documents evidence that rejects the paradox of dissatisfied union members. Using eleven waves of the BHPS, it studies the past, contemporaneous, and future effects of union membership on job satisfaction. By separating union "free riders" from other nonmembers in the fixed effects...

There is a long tradition of psychologists finding small income effects on life satisfaction (or happiness). Yet the issue of income endogeneity in life satisfaction equations has rarely been addressed. This paper aims to do just that. Instrumenting for income and allowing for unobserved...

Using a nationally representative longitudinal data of the British people, this paper explores how different areas of a person's life are affected by unemployment. We find evidence that unemployment is preceded, on average, by a year of dissatisfaction with one's finance and job. Once...

This paper is the first of its kind to estimate the exogenous effect of schooling on reduced blood pressure and the incidence of hypertension. Using the changes of the minimum school-leaving age in the United Kingdom from age 14 to 15 in 1947, and from age 15 to 16 in 1973, as instruments, the...