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Deprivation, Social Exclusion and Subjective Well-Being

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Abstract

This paper aims at investigating empirically the relationship between self-declared satisfaction with life and an individual’s well-being as measured by the indices of deprivation and social exclusion proposed in the income distribution literature. Results on European countries show that life satisfaction decreases with an increase in deprivation and exclusion after controlling for individual’s income, relative income and other influential factors in a multivariate setting.

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Notes

  1. For empirical evidence on these facts see, among others, for (1) Blanchflower and Oswald (2004), Easterlin (1995); for (2) Blanchflower and Oswald (2004), Easterlin (1995); for (3) Frey and Stutzer (2002).

  2. The more well-known exception is that of the `Leyden School' developed by Van Praag (1968) and Kapteyn (1977).

  3. D’Ambrosio and Frick (2007) explored the relationship between self-reported satisfaction with income and relative deprivation as measured by the sum of the gaps between the individual's income and the incomes of all the richer individuals.

  4. The impact of panel attrition on the estimates has been shown in Watson (2003) and Behr et al. (2005) to be only moderate in the ECHP. Differences in response rates are mainly due to household mobility in the sample period and only minimally to other characteristics of the households that could affect our variables of interest.

  5. See van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2004, Chap. 4) for a discussion of what they called the ‘aggregating’ approach.

  6. See on this issue Bartholomew (1980) and Kolenikov and Angeles (2004, 2009).

  7. See, among others, Van Praag et al. (2003).

  8. In the simple OLS regressions, both pooled and by country, the level of the country mean income is always significantly negatively correlated with life satisfaction, while the effect of a variation of it, as in the fixed effect estimations, varies by country and by the life satisfaction index used.

  9. See, among others, Clark (2003) and Winkelmann and Winkelmann (1998).

  10. In the ECHP data the levels of education are grouped as follows: (edu1) Less than second stage of secondary education. (ISCED 0–2); (edu2) Second stage of secondary level education. (ISCED 3); (edu3) Recognized third level education. (ISCED 5–7).

  11. See Sect. 5.1.

  12. See column 5 and 6 in Tables 3 and 4.

  13. The results are available from the authors upon request.

  14. The variable regarding buying new clothes is not present in the data, so we used only 11 variables for Germany.

  15. See Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004) for a detailed discussion on this issue.

  16. The Tables are not presented here but are available from the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We thank a referee, Chiara Gigliarano, Vincent Hildebrand, Eliana La Ferrara, Philippe Van Kerm and participants at workshops and conferences for helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support from MIUR (Prin 2007) and IRISS-C/I at CEPS/INSTEAD (Trans-national Access contract RITA 026040), Differdange (Luxembourg) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy

    Luna Bellani

  2. Università di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Conchita D’Ambrosio

  3. DIW Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Conchita D’Ambrosio

  4. Econpubblica, Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy

    Conchita D’Ambrosio

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  1. Luna Bellani
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  2. Conchita D’Ambrosio
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Correspondence to Luna Bellani.

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Bellani, L., D’Ambrosio, C. Deprivation, Social Exclusion and Subjective Well-Being. Soc Indic Res 104, 67–86 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9718-0

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