Back to baseline in Britain: adaptation in the British household panel survey

Andrew Clark and Yannis Georgellis (y.georgellis@gmail.com)

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We look for evidence of adaptation in wellbeing to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete; this is not so for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar to those in previous work on German panel data. Equally, the time profiles with life satisfaction as the wellbeing measure are very close to those using a twelve-item scale of psychological functioning. As such, the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being found only in German data or using single-item wellbeing measures.

Keywords: life satisfaction; anticipation; adaptation; baseline satisfaction; labour market and life events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J12 J13 J62 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hap and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (127)

Published in Economica, July, 2013, 80(319), pp. 496-512. ISSN: 0013-0427

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Related works:
Journal Article: Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the British Household Panel Survey (2013)
Working Paper: Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the British Household Panel Survey (2013)
Working Paper: Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the British Household Panel Survey (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59327

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