Heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing: An application to occupational allocation in Africa

Paolo Falco, William Maloney, Bob Rijkers and Mauricio Sarrias

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 111, issue C, 137-153

Abstract: By exploiting recent advances in mixed (stochastic parameter) ordered probit estimators and a unique longitudinal dataset from Ghana, this paper examines the distribution of subjective wellbeing across sectors of employment. We find little evidence for the overall inferiority of the small firm informal sector relative to the formal salaried sector at the conditional mean. Moreover, the estimated underlying random parameter distributions unveil substantial latent heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing around the central tendency that fixed parameter models cannot detect. All job categories contain substantial shares of both relatively happy and disgruntled workers.

Keywords: Subjective wellbeing; Mixed ordered probit; Self-employment; Informality; Developing country labor markets; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 I32 J2 J3 J41 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Heterogeneity in Subjective Wellbeing: An Application to Occupational Allocation in Africa (2012)
Working Paper: Heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing: an application to occupational allocation in Africa (2012)
Working Paper: Heterogeneity in Subjective Wellbeing: An Application to Occupational Allocation in Africa (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:111:y:2015:i:c:p:137-153

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.12.022

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