Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Longitudinal Analysis of the Domains of Satisfaction Before and After Disability: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

  • Published:
Social Indicators Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of the onset of disability on life satisfaction and five different domains of satisfaction (health, household income, housing, job, leisure) for German individuals. Particular attention is paid to examining whether individuals can adapt to disability over time before and after its onset in terms of satisfaction. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the period 1984–2008, we estimate an innovative fixed-effects model on life satisfaction and each domain of satisfaction for working-age males (aged 21–58), which allows us to estimate lag and lead effects and thus to test the anticipation and adaptation hypotheses. Although individual obtain complete adaptation to disability in terms of global life satisfaction (5 years after the onset), this adaptation is not complete in all domains of satisfaction. For example, despite the fact that the levels of health satisfaction drop as the individual becomes disabled, after the onset it increases but the levels are lower than those reached before the onset. In contrast, the adaptation is especially faster in the terms of leisure satisfaction (3 years after the onset), household income and housing satisfaction (5 years after the onset in both cases). Our results support the findings obtained in other psychological studies that conclude that the domain of disability extends far beyond health related concerns to encompass the person’s well-being definition of self and social position. Finally, these findings may help policy makers and government to promote social and economic measures and actions lead to increase the scores of global well-being and specific domains of satisfaction of this collective.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For more information on the GSOEP data, see, for example, Warner et al. (2007).

  2. The GSOEP also includes data on how satisfied individuals are with their personal income, child care (if they have small children), family life, volunteer work (if they do any) and insurance (for health care, unemployment, pension, and nursing care). However, these domains of satisfaction are only asked in a few waves. For example, satisfaction with personal income is only available from 2005 onwards, whereas satisfaction with family life is only asked in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

  3. In 2001, the work limitation question in the GSOEP was: Aside from minor illnesses, does your health prevent you from completing everyday tasks like work around the house, paid work, studies, etc.? (Yes/No) To what extent? (Not at all/Slightly/Greatly). This question is the closest one to that included in the CPS. In the CPS every working-age individual in the household is required to answer (in March of the survey year) the following question: “Do you have a health problem or disability which prevents work or which limits the kind or amount of work you can do?” (Yes/No). Those individuals who respond “Yes” are considered disabled.

  4. The variable “degree of disability” is obtained from the following question: “Are you officially registered as having a reduced capacity to work or as being severely disabled? If Yes, what is the degree of your disability?” The degree of disability ranges from 0 (not disabled) to 100 (severely disabled).

  5. If we denote the number of individuals in the data set by N and the number of time periods over which we have information on the individual by T, in balanced panels (in which we have the same number of observations on every individual) we will have NT observations.

  6. This includes those individuals who remain disabled throughout all of the years and are observed within the panel. In this case, we cannot identify any transition between disability and non-disability status. In addition, the number of observations excluded from the estimation analysis is very low.

  7. Although men and women with disabilities are subject to discrimination because of their disabilities, women with disabilities are at a further disadvantage because of the combined discrimination based on disability: they battle gender issues as well as a mental or physical disability. In addition, while men with disabilities have serious employment problems, women with disabilities are significantly worse off and this seems to be true for all types and levels of disabilities.

  8. This total number of males who experience the onset of disability within our panel (504) is greater than that observed in other longitudinal studies on disability. For example, there are 280 individuals (males + females) who experienced disability onset in the work of Jenkins and Riggs (2004).

  9. In contrast, the model used by Oswald and Powdthavee (2008) weights each previous year of disability (variable “Past disability from t − 1 to t − 3”) in the same way.

  10. Clark et al. (2008) include in this Eq. (1) dummy variables from D 0it to D 5it .

  11. Jenkins and Riggs (2004) conclude that those individuals who become disabled, compared to those who do not became disabled, are older, have lower household income, are less likely to be employed and have lower educational levels.

  12. Due to definition of our disability measure, all individuals with a satisfaction with health of at most 2 are considered as disabled. For this reason, Table 4 of "Appendix" shows zeros in the health satisfaction scores 0, 1 and 2 for non-disabled individuals.

  13. We have to remember that the GSOEP contains information on the levels of satisfaction of individuals with their personal income but it is only available from 2005 onwards.

  14. Similar to Clark et al. (2008) and Pagan (2010), we have tested the robustness of the estimation results shown in Table 1. Firstly, we have re-estimated all anticipation and adaptation equations without including the household income variable in order to check the existence of a possible problem of endogeneity. The results obtained in all cases are very similar to those shown in Table 1. Secondly, we have considered each measure of satisfaction as ordinal variables and have estimated conditional fixed-effects logits (using a binary dependent variable that take the value 1 if the level of satisfaction ranges between 0 and 7, and zero if it is between 8 and 10). Once again, the results are very similar and do not change the conclusions reached in our study.

References

  • Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 917–927.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burchardt, T. (2000). The dynamics of being disabled. Journal of Social Policy, 29(4), 645–668.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burkhauser, R., & Daly, M. (1998). Disability and work: The experiences of American and German men. Economic Review, 2, 17–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burkhauser, R., & Schroeder, M. (2007). A method for comparing the economic outcomes of the working-age population with disabilities in Germany and the United States. Journal of Applied Social Science Studies, 127(2), 227–258.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burkhauser, R., Houtenville, A., & Rovba, L. (2006). Accounting for the decline fortunes of working-age people with disabilities. Urbana: Working Paper Cornell University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase, B., Cornille, T., & English, R. (2000). Life satisfaction among persons with spinal cord injuries. Journal of Rehabilitation, 66, 14–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (2006). A note on unhappiness and unemployment duration. Applied Economics Quarterly, 52, 291–308.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A., Georgellis, Y., & Sanfey, P. (2001). Scaring: The psychological effect of past unemployment. Economica, 68(270), 221–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A., Diener, E., Georgelli, Y., & Lucas, R. (2008). Lags and leads in life satisfaction: A test of the baseline hypothesis. Economic Journal, 118, F222–F243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deiner, E., Suh, E., Lucas, R., & Smith, H. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 5, 1–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deiner, E., Lucas, R., & Scollon, C. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Tella, R., Haisken-DeNew, J., & Macculloch, R. (2005). Happiness adaptation to income and to status in an individual panel. Philadelphia: Working Paper Harvard Business School.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., & Frijters, P. (2004). How important is methodology for the estimates of the determinants of happiness? The Economic Journal, 114, 641–659.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., & Van Praag, B. (2002). The subjective costs of health losses due to chronic diseases. An alternative model to monetary appraisal. Health Economics, 11, 709–722.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frederick, S., & Loewenstein, G. (1999). Hedonic adaptation. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well being: The foundation of hedonic psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grimby, G., Finnstram, J., & Jette, A. (1988). On application of the WHO handicap classification in rehabilitation. Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 20, 93–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groot, W., Van den Brink, H., & Plug, E. (2004). Money for health: The equivalent variation of cardiovascular diseases. Health Economics, 13, 859–872.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hotchkiss, J. (2004). Growing part-time employment among workers with disabilities: Marginalization or opportunity? Economic Review, third quarter, 25–40.

  • Jenkins, S., & Riggs, J. (2004). Disability and disadvantage: selection, onset, and duration effects. Journal of Social Policy, 33(3), 479–501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, P., Kooreman, P., Soetevent, A. & Kapteyn, A. (2008). The own and social effects of an unexpected income shock: Evidence from the Dutch postcode lottery. NBER working paper, p. 14035.

  • Livermore, G., Stapleton, D., Nowak, M., Wittenburg, D., & Eiseman, E. (2000). The economics of policies and programs affecting the employment of people with disabilities. Ithaca: Employment and Disability Institute, Cornell University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, R. (2005). Time does not heal all wounds: A longitudinal study of reaction and adaptation. Psychological Science, 16(12), 945–950.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, R. (2007). Long-term disability is associated with lasting changes in subjective well-being: Evidence from two national representative longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(4), 717–780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, R., & Clark, A. (2006). Do people really adapt to marriage? Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 405–426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, R., Clark, A., Georgellis, Y., & Diener, E. (2003). Re examining adaptation and set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 527–539.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, R., Clarke, A., Georgellis, Y., & Diener, E. (2004). Unemployment alters the set-point for life satisfaction. Psychological Science, 15, 8–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ng, Y. (1997). A case of happiness, cardinalism, and interpersonal comparability. The Economic Journal, 107(445), 1848–1858.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • OECD. (2003). Transforming disability into ability: Policies to promote work and income security for disabled people. Paris: OECD.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oi, W. (1991). Disability and a workfare-welfare dilemma. In C. Weaver (Ed.), Disability and Work. Washington: AEI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oswald, A., & Gardner, J. (2006). Do divorcing couples become happier by breaking up? Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 169, 319–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oswald, A., & Powdthavee, N. (2008). Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges. Journal of Public Economics, 92, 1061–1077.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pagan, R. (2010). Onset of disability and life satisfaction: Evidence from the German socio-economic panel. European Journal of Health Economics, 11, 471–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Powdthavee, N. (2009). What happens to people before and after disability? Focusing effects, lead effects, and adaptation in different areas of life. Social Science and Medicine, 69, 1834–1844.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, N. (1995). What respondents learn from questionnaires: The survey interview and the logic of conversation. International Statistical Review, 63, 153–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Praag, B. (1991). Ordinal and cardinal utility: an integration of the two dimensions of the welfare concept. Journal of Econometrics, 50, 69–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Veenhoven, R. (1996). Developments in satisfaction research. Social Indicators Research, 37, 1–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warner, G., Frick, J., & Schupp, J. (2007). The German socio-economic panel study (SOEP): Scope, evolution and enhancements. Journal of Applied Social Science Studies, 127(1), 139–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu, S. (2001). Adapting to heart conditions: A test of the hedonic treadmill. Journal of Health Economics, 20, 495–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann, A., & Easterlin, R. (2006). Happily ever after? Cohabitation, marriage, divorce and happiness in Germany? Population and Development Review, 32(3), 511–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Prof. Richard Lucas for his useful comments and suggestions. I also thank Prof. Richard Burkhauser for providing the data used in this study and all participants in the SOEP 2010 Conference held in Berlin.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Economics, University of Malaga, Plaza de El Ejido s/n, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Ricardo Pagán-Rodríguez

Authors
  1. Ricardo Pagán-Rodríguez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ricardo Pagán-Rodríguez.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 Mean reported satisfaction scores and percentage of highly satisfied (satisfaction score equals or greater than 7 on the scale 1–10) by disability status for males aged 21–58 during the period 1984–2008
Full size table
Table 4 Two-way table of frequencies of the variable “health satisfaction” and “disability” and mean of life satisfaction
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pagán-Rodríguez, R. Longitudinal Analysis of the Domains of Satisfaction Before and After Disability: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Soc Indic Res 108, 365–385 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9889-3

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9889-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation