Happiness Functions with Preference Interdependence and Heterogeneity: The Case of Altruism within the Family

Adrian Bruhin () and Rainer Winkelmann

No 702, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: This study investigates the prevalence and extent of altruism by examining the relationship between parents' and their adult children's subjective well-being in a data set extracted from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In order to segregate the share of parents with altruistic preferences from those who are selfish, we estimate a finite mixture regression model. We control for various sources of potential bias by taking advantage of the data's panel structure. To validate our modeling approach we show that predicted altruists indeed make higher average transfer payments.

Keywords: altruism; subjective well-being; finite mixture regression models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2007-02, Revised 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published in Journal of Population Economics 22, pp. 1063-1080, 2009

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52372/1/wp0702.pdf Revised version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Happiness functions with preference interdependence and heterogeneity: the case of altruism within the family (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soz:wpaper:0702

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