Occupation status-subjective wellbeing nexus: A quantile regression analysis

We investigate the relationship between occupation status and subjective wellbeing (SWB) in South Africa, an issue that has received almost no attention in this field, with data from the 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2017 waves of the National income Dynamics Study (NIDS). While the results based on the random effect ordered probit (REOP) suggest a positive relationship between occupation and SWB, the quantile regression estimates reveal a differential influence of occupation for individuals at different levels of the conditional SWB distribution. Specifically, the quantile regression reveals that while occupation status enters with an expected positive sign, its significant effect is mostly located in the lower to slightly upper part of the SWB distribution (Q25 and Q75). Thus, while our finding clearly supports the positive effect of occupation reported in the existing literature, the distributional influence is more nuanced, implying that the estimates derived from the standard estimators (such as REOP model) might underestimates this effect of occupation at these quantiles at the Q25. The effect of occupation on SWB is robust to the inclusion of interaction terms, such as the interactive effect between race and SWB.