Recent studies focused on testing the Easterlin hypothesis (happiness and national income correlate in the cross-section but not over time) on a global level. We make a case for testing the Easterlin hypothesis at the country level where individual panel data allow exploiting important...

Using longitudinal data for children aged 10-15 years living in England in 2009-2014 we test the hypothesis that income matters for children’s life satisfaction. The results suggest that children are more satisfied with life the more income their family has. Income effects are larger the less...

This paper uses data on the life satisfaction of more than 100,000 individuals in 21 European countries, 2002 - 2011, to study the relationship between subjective well-being and the prices for households of electricity, oil and gas. We find that energy prices have statistically and economically...

Using a rich, nationally representative data set with a large sample of minorities and matched small area characteristics, we explore differences in life satisfaction for ethnic groups living in UK. We test the hypothesis that minorities will be less satisfied, which will in part be explained by...

Unemployment has been robustly shown to strongly decrease subjective well-being (or "happiness"). In the present paper, we use panel quantile regression techniques in order to analyze to what extent the negative impact of unemployment varies along the subjective well-being distribution. In our...

The relationship between happiness and work is subject to an ever growing empirical literature in economics. The analyses are mostly based on large-scale survey data to measure subjective well-being. Whereas one large strand of research investigates the effect of job loss and becoming...

There has been an intense debate as to the effects of offshoring and global value chains on labor, with the debate centering around possible negative employment and income effects for the low(er) skilled in advanced economies. Although sociological and psychological research has shown that...

Using panel data from the BHPS and its Understanding Society extension, we study life satisfaction (LS) and income over nearly two decades, for samples split by education, and age - to our knowledge for the first time. The highly educated went from lowest to highest LS, though their average...

Life satisfaction is increasingly recognised as a desirable individual outcome. Policy attention with respect to child well-being has focused on improving the financial position of families with children. Using Understanding Society I show that child life satisfaction is not associated with...

Daylight savings time (DST) represents a public good with costs and benefits. We provide the first comprehensive examination of the welfare effects of the spring and autumn transitions for the UK and Germany. Using individual-level data and a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the...