Women and happiness

Nicola Matteucci and Sabrina Vieira Lima

Chapter 19 in Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Happiness and Quality of Life, 2016, pp 419-447 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: We survey the happiness and economics field to systematize the explanations of the happiness gender gap, whose puzzling evidence stands out both synchronically and diachronically. Further, this analysis is completed by an interdisciplinary review of competing perspectives, mostly from psychology and medical sciences. Beside disciplinary specificities and differences, results and explanations also reveal some intriguing commonalities. Psychology and medical sciences (also assisted by cutting-edge medical technologies) lead in the static (time-invariant) explanation of happiness and its gender gap, while economic works are better equipped to detect external factors and the role of time-varying objective life conditions. In particular, the happiness and economics field has provided original evidence on the country and time-variant nature of the happiness gender gap. Finally, different disciplines have uncovered the common stylized fact that women are increasingly worse off during their life, through aging, with respect to men: its full explanation still remains at the centre of the research agenda.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Research Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781783471164.00025.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
Working Paper: Women and happiness (2014)
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:elg:eechap:15606_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().