Dissatisfied with Life or with Being Interviewed? Happiness and Motivation to Participate in a Survey

Information on the number of interviewer contacts allows insights into how people's responses to questions on happiness are connected to the difficulty of reaching potential participants. Using the paradata of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper continues such research by revealing a strong link between respondent motivation and reported happiness. Analyses of responses by future non-respondents substantiate this finding and shed light on a key question for empirical research on subjective well-being, which is whether the unhappy tend to avoid survey participation or whether the unwilling might respond more negatively when being asked about their satisfaction with life

Life Satisfaction and Unemployment - The Role of Voluntariness and Job Prospects

By using longitudinal data the relation between satisfaction with life and unemployment is analyzed in this study. Data used in this publication were made available by the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Berlin. A period from 1998-2009 is evaluated. This publication has two goals. (1) To estimate the effects of voluntary and involuntary unemployment on life satisfaction. (2) Moreover, the intent is to answer the question of whether job prospects influence life satisfaction. This study has yielded the following results: In contrast to voluntary job leavings involuntary job leavings noticeable reduce satisfaction. Furthermore, a lack of job prospects before leaving the last position decreases life satisfaction as well. Additionally, an exogenous stimulus (plant shutdown) diminishes satisfaction, especially those of men. The implications are discussed.In dieser Arbeit wird die Beziehung zwischen Lebenszufriedenheit und Arbeitslosigkeit im Längsschnitt untersucht. Die Daten dieser Publikation beruhen auf Zahlen des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) am Deutschen Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), Berlin. Es wird ein Zeitraum von 1998-2009 betrachtet. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der Rolle der Freiwilligkeit und der beruflichen Perspektive für den Einfluss der Arbeitslosigkeit auf die Zufriedenheit. Zentrale Ergebnisse der Fixed-Effects-Regressionen: Im Gegensatz zu freiwilligen Ausschieden aus dem Beruf führen unfreiwillige Abgänge aus der beruflichen Tätigkeit zu einer starken Minderung der Zufriedenheit. Außerdem wirken fehlende berufliche Perspektiven nach der Beendigung einer beruflichen Tätigkeit in den geschätzten Modellen negativ auf die Zufriedenheit. Ferner führt eine Betriebsschließung, ein höchstwahrscheinlich exogenes Ereignis, zu einer signifikanten und bedeutsamen Minderung der Lebenszufriedenheit. Dies gilt in erster Linie für Männer. Die Implikationen werden diskutiert

Bowling Alone or Bowling at All? The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation

This article examines the impact of unemployment on social participation for Germany using the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find significant negative, robust and, for some activities, lasting effects of unemployment on social participation. Causality is established by focussing on plant closures as exogenous entries into unemployment. Social norms, labor market prospects and the perception of individual failure are shown to be relevant for explaining these findings. Furthermore, our results not only (i) provide novel insights into the determinants of the unemployed's unhappiness but also (ii) highlight an hitherto unexplored channel through which unemployment influences economic outcomes, namely by altering the long-run level of social capital, and (iii) point to an alternative explanation of unemployment hysteresis based on access to information

Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being

This paper offers a first empirical investigation of how labor taxation (income and payroll taxes) affects individuals' well-being. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in tax rules over time and across demographic groups using 26 years of German panel data. We find that the tax effect on subjective well-being is significant and positive when controlling for income net of taxes. This interesting result is robust to numerous specification checks. It is consistent with several possible channels through which taxes affect welfare including public goods, insurance, redistributive taste and tax morale

You Don‘t Know What You‘ve Got Till It‘s Gone! Unemployment and Intertemporal Changes in Self-Reported Life Satisfaction

This paper uses concurrently and - for the first time - retrospectively reported life satisfaction from the 1984 to 1987 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to study the importance of different comparison standards for the empirical correlation of unemployment and subjective life satisfaction. It is found that unemployed individuals do not only report significantly lower concurrent satisfaction, but also recall reduced satisfaction from past unemployment well, and retrospectively upgrade their past satisfaction scores. Therefore, the short-term negative effects of unemployment on individual life satisfaction reported in the literature so far are likely underestimated. At the same time, the empirical findings cast doubts on the usefulness of subjective life satisfaction for the precise quantification of welfare effects because of changing comparison standards which greatly limit the intertemporal comparability of the data. For this reason, such data also appear to be of limited use for monitoring long-term economic or social development.Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss verschiedener Vergleichsstandards auf die empirische Korrelation von Arbeitslosigkeit und individueller Lebenszufriedenheit. Dafür werden sowohl longitudinale als auch retrospektive Daten zur subjektiven Lebenszufriedenheit des Deutschen Sozio-ökonomischen Panels aus den Jahren 1984 bis 1987 ausgewertet. Es wird gezeigt, dass Arbeitslose nicht nur zum Zeitpunkt ihrer Arbeitslosigkeit eine geringere Lebenszufriedenheit angeben, sondern sich später auch gut an diese geringere Zufriedenheit erinnern und retrospektiv frühere Angaben zur Lebenszufriedenheit nach oben korrigieren. Die bisher in der Literatur genannten kurzfristigen negativen Effekte von Arbeitslosigkeit auf das individuelle Wohlergehen sind daher wahrscheinlich unterschätzt worden. Allerdings deuten die empirischen Ergebnisse dieser Studie auch darauf hin, dass Daten zur subjektiven Lebenszufriedenheit nur sehr bedingt dazu geeignet sind, Wohlfahrtseffekte zu quantifizieren, da sich die individuellen Evaluationsstandards im Zeitablauf ändern. Aus diesem Grund erscheinen solche Daten auch ungeeignet, um längerfristige sozio-ökonomische Entwicklungen zu beobachten oder zu analysieren

The Pleasures and Pains of Self-Employment: A Panel Data Analysis of Satisfaction with Life, Work, and Leisure

We investigate how a transition from paid employment to self-employment in the labor market influences life satisfaction. Furthermore, we consider the dynamics of work and leisure satisfaction because the balance between work and leisure is an important element of life satisfaction. Fixed-effects regressions using German Socio-Economic Panel data (1984-2012) reveal that switching to self-employment benefits life and work satisfaction. The effects on life satisfaction are weak and temporary, but they are pronounced and relatively persistent for work satisfaction. However, the gain in work satisfaction is outweighed by a decrease in leisure satisfaction, thus placing work-life balance under severe pressure