Life Satisfaction and Happiness Among the Roma in Central and Southeastern Europe

Ermira Kamberi, Borja Martinovic () and Maykel Verkuyten

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2015, vol. 124, issue 1, 199-220

Abstract: This study examines general life satisfaction and happiness as two indicators of subjective well-being among Roma and non-Roma populations in Central and Southeastern Europe. Using a sample of 11,997 participants (Roma N = 8,399, non-Roma N = 3,598) from the Regional Roma Survey in 2011 we test a structural equation model which considers self-rated health, income, education, quality of housing, perceived (ethnic) discrimination, and ethnic group identification as mediators of the relationship between Roma/non-Roma group membership and subjective well-being. Well-being was found to be lower among Roma compared to non-Roma and this was fully due to Roma’s lower health status, lower income, lower education, lower quality of housing, lower ethnic identification, and higher perceived discrimination. The findings confirm that Roma have fewer resources for the attainment of need-gratification which negatively affects their happiness and life satisfaction, thereby, refuting the romanticized image of the Roma as ‘poor but happy people’. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Subjective well-being; Roma; Health; Income; Education; Ethnic identification; Perceived discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-014-0783-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:soinre:v:124:y:2015:i:1:p:199-220

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-014-0783-7

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().