Paul Frijters

How Important is Methodology for the Estimates of the Determinants of Happiness

Psychologists and sociologists usually interpret happiness scores as cardinal and comparable across respondents, and thus run OLS regressions on happiness and changes in happiness. Economists usually assume only ordinality and have mainly used ordered latent response models, thereby not taking satisfactory account of fixed individual traits. We address this problem by developing a conditional estimator for the fixed-effect ordered logit model. We find that assuming ordinality or cardinality of happiness scores makes little difference, whilst allowing for fixed-effects does change results substantially. We call for more research into the determinants of the personality traits making up these fixed-effects.

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.

Does Childhood Predict Adult Life Satisfaction? Evidence from British Cohort Surveys

We investigate the extent to which childhood characteristics are predictive of adult life satisfaction using data from two British cohort studies. In total, variables observed up to age 16 predict around 7% of the variation in average adult life satisfaction. Adding contemporaneous adulthood variables increases the predictive power to 15.6%, while adding long lags of life satisfaction increases it to 35.5%. Overall, we estimate that around 30–45% of adult life satisfaction is fixed, suggesting that 55–70% is transitory in nature, and that a wide range of observed childhood circumstances capture about 15% of the fixed component.

Life Satisfaction Dynamics with Quarterly Life Event Data

Using life satisfaction responses from Australian panel data we examine the questions of when and to what extent individuals are affected by major positive and negative life events, including changes in financial situation, marital status, death of a close relative, and being the victim of crime. The key advantage of our data is that we are able to identify these events on a quarterly basis rather than on the yearly basis used by previous studies. We find evidence that life events are not randomly distributed, that individuals anticipate major events to a large extent, and that they fully adapt to many events within 12 months. The estimates can be used to calculate monetary values needed to compensate individuals for life events. Using a new valuation methodology that incorporates these dynamic factors produces considerably smaller compensation valuations than those calculated using the standard approach.

An Analysis of the Determinants of Job Satisfaction when Individuals’ Baseline Satisfaction Levels May Differ

A growing literature seeks to explain differences in individuals’ self-reported satisfaction with their jobs. The evidence so far has mainly been based on cross-sectional data and when panel data have been used, individual unobserved heterogeneity has been modelled as an ordered probit model with random effects. This article makes use of longitudinal data for Denmark, taken from the waves 1995–1999 of the European Community Household Panel, and estimates fixed effects ordered logit models using the estimation methods proposed by Ferrer-i-Carbonel and Frijters (2004) and Das and van Soest (1999). For comparison and testing purposes a random effects ordered probit is also estimated. Estimations are carried out separately on the samples of men and women for individuals’ overall satisfaction with the jobs they hold. We find that using the fixed effects approach (that clearly rejects the random effects specification), considerably reduces the number of key explanatory variables. The impact of central economic factors is the same as in previous studies, though. Moreover, the determinants of job satisfaction differ considerably between the genders, in particular once individual fixed effects are allowed for.

Can the large swings in russian life satisfaction be explained by ups and downs in real incomes

Russians reported large changes in their life satisfaction over the post-transition years. In this paper, we explore the factors that drove these changes, focusing on exogenous income changes, using panel data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the period 1995 to 2001 and implementing a recently developed ordinal fixed-effects estimator. We apply a causal decomposition technique that allows for bias arising from panel attrition when establishing aggregate trends in life satisfaction. Changes in real household incomes explained 10% of the total change in reported life satisfaction between 1996 and 2000, but up to 30% of some year-on-year changes.

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.

Job Search Methods and their Success: A Comparison of Immigrants and Natives in the UK

A major issue in the immigration debate concerns whether immigrants take jobs away from natives. In this paper, we present new evidence on the job search methods used by immigrants, and the success of immigrants relative to natives in gaining employment through the different job search methods, in the UK context. Our main findings are (1) that immigrant job search is less successful than that of natives using all job search methods, (2) that immigrants are at least as likely to gain employment through informal job search methods as via verifiable routes and (3) that the probability of successful job search increases with years since migration. Our findings imply that immigrants may not effectively compete for jobs with natives, which may help to explain why immigration has been found to have little impact on native employment in the UK.

Do individuals try to maximize general satisfaction

Analyzed is the hypothesis that individuals try to maximize their life-satisfaction. The approach was to derive empirically testable predictions as to the relationships between intentions, actions, importance weights, and satisfaction levels that would be consistent with the hypothesis, and to test these predictions on a Russian and a German panel data set. The respondents investigated were more likely to intend to change those areas they are unsatisfied with this period, were more likely to actually have changed those areas they were unsatisfied with last period, and tended to find the areas of their lives they were dissatisfied with less important. The relationships were not very strong though and were more reliable for the German data set than for the Russian data set. The findings therefore give only limited support to the hypothesis examined.

Job Search with Nonparticipation

In a non-stationary job search model we allow unemployed workers to have a permanent option to leave the labour force. Transitions into nonparticipation occur when reservation wages drop below the utility of being nonparticipant. Taking account of these transitions allows the identification of duration dependence in the job offer arrival rate and the wage offer distribution. We estimate the structural model with individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and use simulated maximum likelihood. The results show that the presence of significant negative duration dependence in the wage offer distribution causes reservation wages to decrease. The rate at which job offers arrive is constant over the unemployment duration. These findings provide micro evidence that the job search environment of unemployed workers is non-stationary because of loss of skills.