Occupational Status and Life Satisfaction in the UK: The Miserable Middle?

Yannis Georgellis (), Andrew Clark, Emmanuel Apergis () and Catherine Robinson ()
Additional contact information
Emmanuel Apergis: University of Huddersfield

No 15360, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use British panel data to explore the link between occupational status and life satisfaction. We find puzzling evidence, for men, of a U-shaped relationship in cross-section data: employees in medium-status occupations report lower life satisfaction scores than that of employees in either low- or high-status occupations. This puzzle disappears in panel data: the satisfaction of any man rises as he moves up the status ladder. The culprit seems to be immobility: the miserable middle is caused by men who (in our data) have always been in medium-status occupations. There is overall little evidence of a link between occupational status and life satisfaction for women.

Keywords: occupational status; life satisfaction; occupational mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J24 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-hap, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2022, 204, 509-527

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15360.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: The miserable middle? (2022)
Working Paper: Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: The miserable middle? (2022)
Working Paper: Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: The miserable middle? (2022)
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:iza:izadps:dp15360

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().