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Reversing the Question: Does Happiness Affect Consumption and Savings Behavior?

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  • Cahit Guven

Abstract

I examine the impact of happiness on consumption and savings behavior using data from the DNB Household Survey from the Netherlands and the German Socio-Economic Panel. Instrumenting individual happiness with regional sunshine, the results suggest that happier people save more, spend less, and have a lower marginal propensity to consume. Happier people take more time for making decisions and have more control over expenditures; they expect a longer life and (accordingly) seem more concerned about the future than the present; they also expect less inflation in the future.

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File URL: http://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.338514.de/diw_sp0219.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) in its series SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research with number 219.

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Length: 52 p.
Date of creation: 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp219

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Keywords: happiness; savings; consumption; weather;

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