Education, Aspirations and Life Satisfaction

Francesco Ferrante ()

No 2009-03, Working Papers from Universita' di Cassino, Dipartimento di Economia e Giurisprudenza

Abstract: The idea that expanding work and consumption opportunities always increases people’s wellbeing is well established in economics but finds no support in psychology. Instead, there is evidence in both economics and psychology that people’s life satisfaction depends on how experienced utility compares with expectations of life satisfaction or decision utility. In this paper I suggest that expanding work and consumption opportunities is a good thing for decision utility but may not be so for experienced utility. On this premise, I argue that people may overrate their socioeconomic prospects relative to real life chances and I discuss how systematic frustration over unfulfilled expectations can be connected to people’s educational achievement. I test the model’s predictions on Italian data and find preliminary support for the idea that education and access to stimulating environments may have a perverse impact on life satisfaction. I also find evidence that the latter effect is mediated by factors such as gender and age. Indeed, the model seeks to go beyond the Italian case and provide more general insights into how age/life satisfaction relationships can be modelled and explained.

Keywords: education; opportunities; aspirations; life satisfaction; regret (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D1 D60 H11 I2 I38 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2009-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Journal Article: Education, Aspirations and Life Satisfaction (2009)
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