Previous research on the determinants of international migration has largely focused on objective factors, such as income. We instead use subjective well-being (SWB) to explain international migration desires, an expressed willingness to migrate. We find that individuals with higher SWB have...

This paper makes use of the 2006 Gallup World Survey, which includes opinions on satisfaction with various aspects of life in 130 countries. Although a very solid relationship is found between satisfaction and income (both across and within countries), raising doubts regarding the well-known...

This study is an empirical investigation of the empty nest syndrome, commonly understood as a situation where there are feelings of loss or loneliness for mothers and/or fathers following the departure of the last child from the family home. This investigation makes use of rich, longitudinal,...

This study is an empirical investigation of the empty nest syndrome, commonly understood as a situation where there are feelings of loss or loneliness for mothers and/or fathers following the departure of the last child from the family home. This investigation makes use of rich, longitudinal,...

This paper utilizes two measures of subjective well-being to test a hypothesis that a marginal increase in subjective well-being associated with a marginal increase in income is larger for poorer than for richer populations. This hypothesis is examined in the setting of Slovak Roma, who are poor...

Increasing evidence from the empirical economic and psychological literature suggests that positive and negative well-being are more than opposite ends of the same phenomenon. Two separate measures of the dependent variable may be needed when analyzing the determinants of subjective well-being....

A central finding in happiness research is that a person's income relative to the average income in her social reference group is more important for her life satisfaction than the absolute level of her income. This dependence of life satisfaction on relative income can be related to the...

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education...

We analyze the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. We find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social...

There is no significant relationship between the improvement in happiness and the long term rate of growth of GDP per capita. This is true for three groups of countries analyzed separately - 17 developed, 9 developing, and 11 transition - and also for the 37 countries taken together. Time series...