B.M.S. van Praag

The Anatomy of Subjective Well-Being

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 different subjective domain satisfactions. A distinction is made between long-term and short-term effects. The individual domain satisfactions depend on objectively measurable variables, such as income. The model is estimated using a large German panel data set.

Hidden Consequences of Success in Pediatrics: Parental Health-Related Quality of Life—Results From the Care Project

CONTEXT. The number of parents who care for a chronically ill child is increasing. Because of advances in medical care, parental caring tasks are changing. A detailed description of parental health-related quality of life will add to the understanding of the impact of caring for a chronically ill child. This will contribute to pediatric family care. OBJECTIVE. Our goal was to determine the health-related quality of life of parents of chronically ill children compared with parents of healthy schoolchildren. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS. A survey of 533 parents of children with chronic conditions (10 diagnosis groups, children aged 1–19 years, diagnosed >1 year ago, living at home) and 443 parents of schoolchildren was conducted between January 2006 and September 2007. Parents were approached through Emma Childrens Hospital (which has a tertiary referral and a regional function) and through parent associations. The comparison group included parents of healthy schoolchildren. Health-related quality of life was assessed with the TNO-AZL Questionnaire for Adults Health Related Quality of Life. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE. Health-related quality of life measures gross and fine motor function, cognitive functioning, sleep, pain, social functioning, daily activities, sexuality, vitality, positive and depressive emotions, and aggressiveness. The health-related quality of life of the study group was compared with that of the comparison group, and effect sizes were estimated. The percentages of parents at risk for a low health-related quality of life were compared with the 25th percentile scores of the comparison group. RESULTS. Parents of chronically ill children had a significantly lower health-related quality of life. Subgroup analysis showed lower health-related quality of life on sleep, social functioning, daily activities, vitality, positive emotions, and depressive emotions in disease-specific groups. On average, 45% of the parents were at risk for health-related quality-of-life impairment. CONCLUSIONS. Parents of chronically ill children report a seriously lower health-related quality of life, which should receive attention and supportive care if necessary. A family-centered approach in pediatrics is recommended.

The Effects of Climate on Welfare and Well-Being in Russia

This paper measures the concepts of welfare and well-being in Russia on the basis of two large Russian household surveys, carried out in 1993 and 1994. Welfare refers to satisfaction with income and well-being refers to satisfaction with life as a whole. This paper investigates how climate conditions in various parts of Russia affect the cost of living and well-being. Climate equivalence scales have been constructed for both welfare and well-being.

How Dutch Teenagers spend their Money

Adolescents have relatively large sums of money at their disposal; How and on what goods they spend their money is the subject of this paper. An AID system describing the influences of demographic characteristics, pseudo-prices and income on various expenditure categories is estimated. The system is estimated in two steps with the first step explaining zero-expenditures. Income elasticities and pseudo-price elasticities are presented. A comparison is made on the basis of three large data sets, gathered in 1984, 1990, and 1992.

The Effects of different Forms of Two- and Single-Parent Families on the Well-Being of Their Children in Dutch Secondary Education

The aim of this article is to compare the well-being of Dutch children living in different forms of single-parent families and different forms of two-parent families. We found that living in a mother-headed family caused by divorce has a negative influence on childrens well-being. However, the effects we found were very small compared to the much larger effects of some other control variables, like parental education. Living in single-parent families or step-families caused by death have less negative effects on children than living in single-parent families or step-families caused by divorce. Our results give some support to the weak social position of the mother as an explanation for the negative effect of single parenthood, while the negative effects of living in a mother-headed family caused by death are larger than those of living in a father-headed family caused by death. Living in a single-parent family does not harm the well-being of boys more or less than that of girls living in the same family form. The negative effects of living in a single-mother family are not strengthened by the low educational level of the mother, nor are they neutralized by the high educational level of the mother. The effects we found in this continental European study are substantially smaller than those found in studies in the U.S.A.

A Structural Model of Well-being: with an application to German Data

In this paper we attempt to explain individual, ordinally comparable,satisfaction levels. We postulate a simultaneous equation model where general satisfaction isexplained by exogenous shock and level variables, and by the values of the satisfactionswith respect to six distinct endogenous domains of life. Taking into account that thesesatisfactions were categoricallymeasured and allowing for individual effects, the model was estimatedon six consecutive waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. The results are statistically verysignificant and plausible.The main conclusions of this paper are:given the fact thatwe get stable significant andintuitively interpretable results, the assumption of interpersonal(ordinal) comparability ofsatisfactions cannot be rejected on the grounds that it leads toinsignificant or implausible results;It is possible to explain satisfactions to a large extent byobjectively measurable variables;Domain Satisfactions are strongly interrelated because of commonexplanatory variables;General Satisfaction may be seen as an aggregate of the six domainsatisfactions.

Evaluation Questions and Income Utility

One of the most intriguing issues in human sciences is the nature and measurement of well-being. Feelings of well-being or lack of well-being are determined by many factors. One of the most important determinants is individual income as an index for the availability of material resources. If we take the other factors to be constant, we may concentrate on the question how well-being changes with variations in income. To stress that we like to consider only this effect we do not speak of well-being but of income utility or alternatively of welfare derived from income. Let U stand for income utility and y for income, then we are interested in the assumed relationship U = U(y). It will be called the individual welfare function of income or WFI for short.

Measurement of Poverty — Examplified by the German Case

In the last decades, economists have taken a renewed interest in the poverty phenomenon (e.g. Atkinson 1974, Sen 1976, 1983, Hagenaars 1986). In the European policy context the European Commission took the lead in the European Poverty Program which first focused on action programs to alleviate poverty. The statistical agency of the EU (EUROSTAT) has also commissioned research to estimate poverty in the member states according to various poverty definitions (see Van Praag, Hagenaars and Van Weeren, 1982).

Vignette Equivalence and Response Consistency: The Case of Job Satisfaction

We compare reported job satisfaction with vignette evaluations of hypothetical jobs by using a British, Greek and Dutch data set, containing 95 randomly assigned vignettes. In order to test comparability of international data sets recently the method of anchoring vignettes has been introduced by King et al. (2004). This intuitively and attractive idea requires the properties of vignette equivalence and response consistency. In our data set both job satisfaction and vignettes are numerically evaluated on a 0-10-scale. This fact allows us to interpret the evaluations as cardinal satisfaction values and to estimate satisfaction functions for vignettes and for the own job situation. We find that both functions differ significantly: vignette evaluations appear to depend on the own job situation and other individual characteristics. Hence, without correction for those differences in background characteristics, vignette evaluations are not comparable between individuals. Similar conclusions are reached for response consistency.

Elliptical regression operationalized

Abstract In this paper we consider the linear regression case with random regressors. The statistical properties of the regression coefficient estimators are easy to derive if we assume that the explanatory variables and the variable to explain are drawn from a joint multivariate normal distribution. This assumption is rather restrictive. It is well known [e.g., see Bentler (1983), Browne (1984)] that if the parent distribution is generalized to the class of elliptical distributions, the classical regression model keeps its interpretation. However, the statistical properties of the regression coefficient estimates change. In this paper we show how elliptical regression can be operationalized by using a result of Mardia. It implies a simple addition to a standard OLS-program. Some numerical examples are presented.