Family, money, and health: regional differences in the determinants of life cycle life satisfaction

Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä
Additional contact information
Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2012-012, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: We examine how family, money, and health explain variation in life satisfaction (“happiness”) over the life cycle. Globally, these factors explain a substantial fraction of happiness, increasing from 12 percent in young adulthood to 15 percent in mature adulthood. Health is the most important factor, and its importance increases with age. Income is important only at ages below 50. Remarkably, the contribution of family is small across ages. Across regions health is most important in the wealthier, and income in the poorer regions of the world. Family explains a substantial fraction of happiness only in Western Europe and Anglophone countries.

Keywords: World; family; health; income; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hap and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2012-012.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2012-012

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2012-012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm (wilhelm@demogr.mpg.de).