Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Gender and Well-being Around the World: Some Insights from the Economics of Happiness

Contents:

Author Info

  • Carol Graham

    (The Brookings Institution)

  • Soumya Chattopadhyay

    (The Brookings Institution)

Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    A wide body of research explores gender differences in welfare outcomes, and their implications for economic development. We aim to contribute to this work by looking at differences in reported well-being (happiness) across genders around the world. We examine differences across genders within countries, comparing age, income, education, and urban versus rural cohorts, and explore how those same within country differences vary in countries of different development levels. Our findings, based also on previous research on well-being more generally, highlight some consistent patterns across genders, with women typically happier than men in the world as a whole, with the exception of the poorest sample of countries. We also find substantial differences in the standard relationships between key variables - such as marriage - and happiness when we take differences in gender rights into account. Our research also suggests that cross-gender differences in well-being are affected by the same empirical and methodological factors that drive the paradoxes underlying the income and happiness debates more generally, with norms and expectations playing an important mediating role. Women's happiness seems to fall - at least in the short-term - when there are changes/improvements in gender rights, in keeping with our more general findings on the drops in reported well-being that are often associated with the process of acquiring agency.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Graham_Chattopadhyay_2012_GenderandWellBeing.pdf
    File Function: First version, 3/1/2012
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL:
    Download Restriction: no

    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group in its series Working Papers with number 2012-010.

    as in new window
    Length:
    Date of creation: Mar 2012
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2012-010

    Note: MIE
    Contact details of provider:
    Email:
    Web page: http://www.hceconomics.org/
    More information through EDIRC

    Related research

    Keywords: happiness; gender; agency; expectations;

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    References

    No references listed on IDEAS
    You can help add them by filling out this form.

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Gender and Well-being Around the World: Some Insights from the Economics of Happiness
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2012-05-28 17:16:18
    2. Freedom vs happiness
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2012-05-28 13:48:18
    3. Freedom, well-being & capitalism
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2012-07-29 12:03:31
    4. Why was Hobsbawm wrong?
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2012-10-02 13:03:20

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2012-010

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jennifer Pachon).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.