She's Leaving Home: A Large Sample Investigation of the Empty Nest Syndrome

Alan Piper and Ian Jackson

No 910, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This study considers life satisfaction in relation to the empty nest syndrome, which is a situation where there are feelings of loss or loneliness for mothers and/or fathers following the departure of the last child from the parental home. In particular, the investigation considers the significance of Identity Economics when applied to parents experiencing a reduction in well-being following an extended period of child-rearing. The origins of the empty nest syndrome are first considered briefly before conducting an economic analysis of life satisfaction using the German Socio-Economic Panel. Our particular focus is the change in the subjective well-being of the individuals who become empty nesters, taking advantage of the richness of this dataset. As a result, this is the first large sample economic analysis of its kind to use identity to evaluate the effects of becoming “empty nest” parents in a systematic way.

JEL-codes: D64 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: She’s leaving home: a large sample investigation of the empty nest syndrome (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp910

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