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Money and Happiness: Evidence from the Industry Wage Structure

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  • Pischke, Jörn-Steffen

    () (London School of Economics)

Abstract

There is a well-established positive correlation between life-satisfaction measures and income in individual level cross-sectional data. This paper attempts to provide some evidence on whether this correlation reflects causality running from money to happiness. I use industry wage differentials as instruments for income. This is based on the idea that at least part of these differentials are due to rents, and part of the pattern of industry affiliations of individuals is random. To probe the validity of these assumptions, I compare estimates for life satisfaction with those for job satisfaction, present fixed effects estimates, and present estimates for married women using their husbands' industry as the instrument. All these specifications paint a fairly uniform picture across three different data sets. IV estimates are similar to the OLS estimates suggesting that most of the association of income and well-being is causal.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 5705.

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Length: 64 pages
Date of creation: May 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5705

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Keywords: Life satisfaction; well-being;

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References

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  1. Apouey, Bénédicte & Clark, Andrew E., 2010. "Winning Big but Feeling No Better? The Effect of Lottery Prizes on Physical and Mental Health," IZA Discussion Papers 4730, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Simon Luechinger, 2009. "Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 482-515, 03.
  3. Mayraz, Guy & Wagner, Gert G. & Schupp, Jürgen, 2009. "Life Satisfaction and Relative Income: Perceptions and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 4390, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2001. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," CESifo Working Paper Series 503, CESifo Group Munich.
  5. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2008. "Happiness Inequality in the United States," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(S2), pages S33-S79, 06.
  6. Clark, Andrew E. & Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Who Compares to Whom? The Anatomy of Income Comparisons in Europe," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 0907, CEPREMAP.
  7. Richard Layard & Guy Mayraz & Stephen Nickell, 2009. "Does Relative Income Matter? Are the Critics Right?," CEP Discussion Papers dp0918, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  8. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2008. "Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox," CESifo Working Paper Series 2394, CESifo Group Munich.
  9. Layard, R. & Mayraz, G. & Nickell, S., 2008. "The marginal utility of income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1846-1857, August.
  10. Ackerberg, Daniel & Devereux, Paul J., 2008. "Improved JIVE Estimators for Overidentified Linear Models with and without Heteroskedasticity," CEPR Discussion Papers 6926, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  11. Holzer, Harry J & Katz, Lawrence F & Krueger, Alan B, 1991. "Job Queues and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 106(3), pages 739-68, August.
  12. Oreopoulos, Philip, 2007. "Do dropouts drop out too soon? Wealth, health and happiness from compulsory schooling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2213-2229, December.
  13. Erzo F.P. Luttmer, 2004. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," NBER Working Papers 10667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  14. Easterlin, Richard A., 1995. "Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 35-47, June.
  15. Oswald, Andrew & Proto, Eugenio & Sgroi, Daniel, 2013. "Happiness and Productivity," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 107, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  16. Oswald, Andrew J. & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2007. "Death, Happiness, and the Calculation of Compensatory Damages," IZA Discussion Papers 3159, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  17. Gardner, Jonathan & Oswald, Andrew J., 2006. "Money and Mental Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study of Medium-Sized Lottery Wins," IZA Discussion Papers 2233, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  18. Paul Frijters & John P. Haisken-DeNew & Michael A. Shields, 2004. "Money Does Matter! Evidence from Increasing Real Income and Life Satisfaction in East Germany Following Reunification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 730-740, June.
  19. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-29, October.
  20. Robert Gibbons & Lawrence F. Katz, 1992. "Does Unmeasured Ability Explain Inter-Industry Wage Differentials?," NBER Working Papers 3182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  21. Arnaud Chevalier & Reamonn Lydon, 2002. "Estimates of the Effect of Wages on Job Satisfaction," CEP Discussion Papers dp0531, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Money and Happiness: Evidence from the Industry Wage Structure
    by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2011-06-06 10:30:15
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Cited by:
  1. Akay, Alpaslan & Bargain, Olivier & Dolls, Mathias & Neumann, Dirk & Peichl, Andreas & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2012. "Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 6999, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Robert J. B. Goudie & Sach Mukherjee & Andrew J. Oswald & Stephen Wu, 2012. "Happiness as a Driver of Risk-Avoiding Behavior," CEP Discussion Papers dp1126, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  3. Berlin, Martin & Kaunitz, Niklas, 2011. "Subjective Well-Being, Income and Economic Margins," Working Paper Series 12/2011, Swedish Institute for Social Research.

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