We develop a theoretical framework that considers four distinct explanatory channels through which neighbors' income could affect utility: public goods, cost of living, expectations of future income, and the direct effect (relative income hypothesis (RIH) and altruism). The relationship is...

This chapter summarizes the latest state of the art in economic research on unemployment and subjective well-being. Outcomes covered are general life satisfaction, affective well-being, and mental health. Special attention is paid to empirical evidence as obtained from popular panel data sets....

We study the effects of Massachusetts' healthcare reform on individuals' subjective well-being. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the reform significantly improved Massachusetts residents' overall life-satisfaction. This result is robust to various...

This short note seeks to replicate the quantile regression analysis in Binder and Coad (2011), but taking into account individual-specific fixed effects (using the BHPS data set). It finds declining effects of the four main variables of interest (health, social life, income, education) over the...

This paper contributes to the literature on subjective well-being (SWB) by taking into account different aspects of life, called domains, such as health, financial situation, job, leisure, housing, and environment. We postulate a two-layer model where individual total SWB depends on the...

In this paper, we address the relationship between age and several dimension of subjective wellbeing. Whilst literature generally finds a U-shaped age-profile in subjective well-being, this agepattern might only hold after controlling for objective life circumstances. The observed U-shaped...

This paper assesses the long-run toll taken by a large-scale technological disaster on welfare, well-being and mental health. We estimate the causal effect of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe after 20 years by linking geographic variation in radioactive fallout to respondents of a nationally...

This paper assesses the long-run toll taken by a large-scale technological disaster on welfare, well-being and mental health. We estimate the causal effect of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe after 20 years by linking geographic variation in radioactive fallout to respondents of a nationally...

The paper deals with the effects of social participation activities on life satisfaction. Using the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) for 2010, marginal effects of binary probit estimations on life satisfaction are presented. Strong gender differences are observable. While sport, welfare or...

A robust relationship between subjective well-being and mortality has been established in the literature. While this relationship has been confirmed for many measures and data sets, few studies address how it is affected by concrete diseases. In this paper we assess for the British Household...