Rising Aspirations Dampen Satisfaction

Andrew Clark, Akiko Kamesaka and Teruyuki Tamura

No 1507, CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) from CEPREMAP

Abstract: It is commonly-believed that education is a good thing for individuals. Yet its correlation with subjective well-being is most often only weakly positive, or even negative, despite the many associated better individual-level outcomes We here square the circle using novel Japanese data on happiness aspirations. If reported happiness comes from a comparison of outcomes to aspirations, then any phenomenon raising both at the same time will have only a muted effect on reported well-being. We find that around half of the happiness effect of education is cancelled out by higher aspirations, and suggest a similar dampening effect for income.

Keywords: education; satisfaction; aspirations; income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hap and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Rising aspirations dampen satisfaction (2015)
Working Paper: Rising aspirations dampen satisfaction (2015)
Working Paper: Rising aspirations dampen satisfaction (2015)
Working Paper: Rising Aspirations Dampen Satisfaction (2015)
Working Paper: Rising Aspirations Dampen Satisfaction (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpm:docweb:1507

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