What Can Happiness Research Tell Us about Altruism?: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

Johannes Schwarze and Rainer Winkelmann

No 475, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Much progress has been made in recent years on developing and applying a direct measure of utility using survey questions on subjective well-being. In this paper we explore whether this new type of measurement can be fruitfully applied to the study of interdependent utility in general, and altruism between parents and children in particular. We introduce an appropriate econometric methodology and, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000 - 2002, find that the parents' self-reported happiness depends positively, albeit not very strongly, on the happiness of adult children who moved out.

Keywords: Utility function; Extended family; Fixed effects; Ordered probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D6 D64 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 p.
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Related works:
Working Paper: What Can Happiness Research Tell Us About Altruism? Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2005)
Working Paper: What can happiness research tell us about altruism? Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2005)
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