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Does Happiness Pays? A Longitudinal Family Life Survey

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Abstract

Most of the research on happiness has documented that income, marriage, employment and health affect happiness. Very few studies examine whether happiness itself affect income, marriage, employment and health. This study does so, benefiting from data drawn from the panel longitudinal Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) 2007 and 2014. The survey includes 23,776 individuals from 15,067 households living in about 262 neighborhoods between 2007 and 2014. The findings show that happier Indonesians in 2007 earned more money, were more likely to be married, were less likely to be divorced or unemployed, and were in better health when the survey was conducted again seven years later. Policy makers may consider that increasing citizen happiness is vital to achieve citizen success on labor markets, to improve their job performance and to maintain their health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Portsmouth Brawijaya Centre for Global Health, Population and Policy, University of Brawijaya Malang Indonesia, JL MT Haryono 163, Malang, 65145, Indonesia

    Sujarwoto Sujarwoto

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  1. Sujarwoto Sujarwoto
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Correspondence to Sujarwoto Sujarwoto.

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The use of the dataset for this study was approved by the ethical committee at the University of Brawijaya Indonesia.

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Sujarwoto, S. Does Happiness Pays? A Longitudinal Family Life Survey. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 679–701 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09798-x

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