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How Do Educational Attainment and Occupational and Wage-Earner Statuses Affect Life Satisfaction? A Gender Perspective Study

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Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of education on life satisfaction once indirect effects through income, health, participation in the workforce or professional status are controlled for. The focus is placed on gender differences, thus studying whether the effects of education on life satisfaction differ for women and men and whether occupational variables and the individual’s role in the household may mediate this relationship. Among the results, we find that gender differences in life satisfaction tend to disappear when account is taken of the individuals’ role as primary wage earner in the household. Regarding education, our results suggest that its impact on satisfaction with life differs for women and men: both direct and indirect effects of education are found for women whereas no direct effects of education appear in the case of men, but only indirect effects through enhanced job opportunities and professional status.

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Notes

  1. Under the signaling or screening views, schooling is seen as having no effects on productivity although it may provide a signal of the individual’s abilities to employers. In any case, these approaches also entail that schooling allows the individual to enjoy better job opportunities and greater wages.

  2. Extensive reviews on the ‘happiness economics’ literature can be found in Bruni and Porta (2007) or Frey (2008). The ‘happiness literature’ bases on individuals’ self-reported data about satisfaction with life, happiness or subjective wellbeing. Although satisfaction with life is a component, in addition to positive and negative affects, of subjective wellbeing (Diener 1984), the words happiness, satisfaction and (subjective) wellbeing will be used indistinctly throughout this paper. In any case, the focus of our study is on life satisfaction.

  3. Dolan et al. (2008) provides a comprehensive review on the determinants of wellbeing. A recent survey of the happiness literature at the international level can also be found in Blanchflower and Oswald (2011). Additionally, Clark et al. (2008) offer an extensive review of the economic research focused on the relationship between happiness and income.

  4. See, among others, the work by Clark and Oswald (1994), Di Tella et al. (2001), Gandelman and Hernández-Murillo (2009) or Winkelmann (2009) for the effects of unemployment on wellbeing.

  5. Countries in the sample are: Argentina, Australia, Andorra, Bulgaria, Brazil, Burkina, Chile, China, Colombia, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.

  6. The WVS thus provides information on the individuals’ relative income and not on absolute income. Nevertheless, considering relative income is usual in the happiness literature and it is generally found that relative income shows at least as much influence on individual satisfaction as absolute income. For a discussion of the effects of absolute vs. relative income in perceived wellbeing, see the works by Frank (2005) and Clark et al. (2008).

  7. The use of subjective or self-reported health could lead to problems of endogeneity and reversed causality. However, the use of subjective health is usual in the literature on subjective wellbeing and self-reported measures of health seem to be a good proxy of objective health measures to which they are highly correlated (Pinquart 2001).

  8. Running OLS regressions or ordered latent response models makes little difference to results (see Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters 2004). Here we report OLS estimates so the marginal effects can be directly compared. Ordered probit regressions have also been run and the results are qualitatively similar (the estimates for the ordered probit regressions are shown in the “Appendix”).

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Fundamental Research Projects ECO2009-13864-C03-01 and ECO2009-13864-C03-02).

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Correspondence to Mª del Mar Salinas-Jiménez.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6, and 7.

Table 5 Determinants of life satisfaction: baseline specification (estimated coefficients from ordered probit regressions)
Table 6 Life satisfaction and occupational and wage earner statuses (estimated coefficients from ordered probit regressions)
Table 7 Main wage earner role and life satisfaction (estimated coefficients from ordered probit regressions)

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Salinas-Jiménez, M.M., Artés, J. & Salinas-Jiménez, J. How Do Educational Attainment and Occupational and Wage-Earner Statuses Affect Life Satisfaction? A Gender Perspective Study. J Happiness Stud 14, 367–388 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9334-6

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