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on Economics of Happiness |
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Issue of 2017‒08‒06
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Marisa Bucheli (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Andrea Vigorito (Instituto de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | There is scarce quantitative evidence on the well-being effects of separation and the specific role of child support payments in Latin American countries, due to the paucity of longitudinal data. This article contributes to fill this gap by analyzing the impact of family breakdown and child support in Uruguay on a wide set of household and child outcomes, based on two waves of a longitudinal study (Estudio Longitudinal del Bienestar en Uruguay), that follows-up children that were first graders at public primary schools in 2004. We restrict our study to households composed by cohabiting couples in the baseline (2004). The effect is estimated using a combined difference in difference- PSM method. Our main findings that show that separation entails a significant per capita household income loss (12%) and increases deprivation in terms of income poverty and access to durable goods, for custodial mothers. However, the income fall is partially mitigated by paternal child support payments, public transfers, changes in living arrangements and behavioral responses among mothers, whose labor earnings increase significantly after separation. Meanwhile, separation seems to worsen child educational outcomes, particularly grade repetition. However, this disadvantage vanishes for those children receiving transfers from non co-resident parents. |
| Keywords: | divorce, child support, Uruguay, panel data |
| JEL: | J12 J13 I30 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:wpaper:0317&r=hap |
| By: | Andrew E. Clark; Sarah Flèche; Warn N. Lekfuangfu |
| Abstract: | To what extent do childhood experiences continue to affect adult wellbeing over the life course? Previous work on this link has been carried out either at one particular adult age or for some average of adulthood. We here use two British birth-cohort datasets (the 1958 NCDS and the 1970 BCS) to map out the time profile of the effect of childhood on adult outcomes, including life satisfaction. We find that the effect of many aspects of childhood do not fade away over time, but are rather remarkably stable. In both birth cohorts child non-cognitive skills are the strongest predictors of adult life satisfaction at all ages. Of these, emotional health is the strongest. Childhood cognitive performance is more important than good conduct in explaining adult life satisfaction in the earlier cohort, whereas this ranking is inverted in the more recent BCS. |
| Keywords: | life satisfaction, cohort data, childhood, adult outcomes |
| JEL: | A12 D60 I31 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1493&r=hap |
| By: | Adrian Chadi (Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union); Clemens Hetschko (Freie Universität Berlin, School of Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study the usually assumed trade-off between income and leisure in labor supply decisions using comprehensive German panel data. We compare non-employed individuals after plant closures with employed people regarding both income and time use as well as their subjective perceptions of these two factors. We find that the gain of non-working time translates intohigher satisfaction with free time, while time spent on hobbiesincreases to a lesser extent than home production. Additionally, satisfaction with family life increases, which may be a hidden benefit of being unemployed. In contrast, satisfaction with income strongly declines when becoming jobless. Identity utility from earning a living may play the role of a hidden benefit of employment. Finally, we examine subjective assessments of income and leisure as potential predictors for job take-up. Non-employed people are particularly likely to take up a job soon when they are dissatisfied with their income. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, plant closure, leisure, work-family conflict, life satisfaction, income satisfaction, free time satisfaction, family satisfaction |
| JEL: | D01 D13 I31 J22 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iaa:dpaper:201706&r=hap |