Happiness Functions with Preference Interdependence and Heterogeneity: The Case of Altruism within the Family

Adrian Bruhin () and Rainer Winkelmann ()

No 702, Working Papers from University of Zurich, Socioeconomic Institute

Abstract: This study investigates the prevalence and extent of altruism by examining the relationship between parents' and their adult children's subjective well-being in a data set extracted from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In order to segregate the share of parents with altruistic preferences from those who are selfish, we estimate a finite mixture regression model. We control for various sources of potential bias by taking advantage of the data's panel structure. To validate our modeling approach we show that predicted altruists indeed make higher average transfer payments.

Keywords: altruism; subjective well-being; finite mixture regression models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
Date: Written 2007-02
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Forthcoming in Journal of Population Economics, 2008

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