The paradox of declining female happiness

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

No 2009-11, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Abstract: By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women?s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women?s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging?one with higher subjective well-being for men.

Keywords: Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (192)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/papers/2009/wp09-11bk.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (2009)
Working Paper: The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (2009)
Working Paper: The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (2009)
Working Paper: The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (2009)
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:fip:fedfwp:2009-11

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().