Junji Kageyama (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)
Abstract
This paper examines the effects of happiness on the sex gap in life expectancy. Utilizing a cross-country data set, it first inspects the reverse effect of the life expectancy gap on happiness and demonstrates that the life expectancy gap negatively affects happiness through the composition of marital status. Taking this reverse causality into account, it shows that happiness is significant on explaining the differences in the life expectancy gap between countries. As national average happiness increases, the sex difference in life expectancy decreases. This is consistent with the findings that psychological stress (unhappiness)adversely affects survival and that the effect of psychological stress on mortality is more severe for men. This result provides an indirect evidence that happiness affects survival even at the national aggregate level.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany in its series MPIDR Working Papers with number
WP-2009-009.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: