Mariana Gerstenblüth (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) Máximo Rossi (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) Patricia Triunfo (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
In this study we analyze data on happiness to find out the relationship between this issue and others aspects of life, based on the Latinobarometro 2004 for Argentina and Uruguay. The focus is put on self-reported health status as a key aspect in increasing happiness levels, although we also analyze the relationship between happiness and income, age, gender, education, employment status and religiosity. Then, the probabilty of being happy is econometrically estimated by probit models for each country and the region. Results show that the main relationship is between happiness and health status. Whether this is a causal effect or only a correlation, is not clear. This issue is explored by using propensity score matching methods, finding that reporting a good health status increases the probability of being satisfied with life by 31 and 46 percentage points in Uruguay, 15 and 27 percentage points in Argentina; and between 17 and 27 percentage points for the pool data. According to previous literature, we find that the relationship between age and happiness is U-shaped, with happiness being lowest in the age of 52.
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.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
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.:
Clark, Andrew E & Oswald, Andrew J, 1994.
"Unhappiness and Unemployment,"
Economic Journal,
Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(424), pages 648-59, May.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)