IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ariqol/v11y2016i2d10.1007_s11482-014-9380-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Expectations and Happiness: Evidence from British Panel Data

Author

Listed:
  • Tufan Ekici

    (Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus, Economics Program)

  • Selda Koydemir

    (Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus, Guidance and Psychological Counseling Program)

Abstract

We analyze the impact of households’ subjective current and future financial measures on their well-being by using three waves of a longitudinal data set—Understanding Society -from the UK. We use a fixed-effects regression method to get rid of individual heterogeneity, and find that even after controlling for some demographic characteristics, including equivalent household income, subjective measures of current and future financial well-being are still significant correlates of life satisfaction in UK households. The same results hold for income satisfaction and mental health. Our main contribution however is showing that positive surprises in financial expectations decrease the subjective well-being of the household’s, and vice versa for negative surprises. This result shows that even though a household’s expectations of its future financial situation may not be accurate, any unexpected shock regarding household income could be significantly correlated with subjective well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Tufan Ekici & Selda Koydemir, 2016. "Income Expectations and Happiness: Evidence from British Panel Data," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 539-552, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:11:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11482-014-9380-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11482-014-9380-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-014-9380-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11482-014-9380-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:11:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11482-014-9380-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.