What makes workers happy?

Peter H. van der Meer and Rudi Wielers

Applied Economics, 2013, vol. 45, issue 3, 357-368

Abstract: This article answers the question what makes workers happy? It does so by combining insights from micro-economics, sociology and psychology. Basis is the standard utility function of a worker that includes income and hours of work and is elaborated with job characteristics. In this way it is possible to answer whether part-time workers are happier than full-time workers. The utility function is estimated on basis of the European Social Survey 2004 which contains all necessary information. The results show that workers optimize income and hours of work as predicted by micro-economics, but also that part-time workers are happier than full-time workers. Challenging work with a high level of autonomy makes the workers happy, work pressure makes workers unhappy. Higher educated workers are unhappier than lower educated workers, we find a negative effect of education, but this is compensated by the type of jobs these higher educated hold.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2011.602011 (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:taf:applec:v:45:y:2013:i:3:p:357-368

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.602011

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().