On Gender Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Does Discrimination Matter?

Justina A. V. Fischer, Christian Bjørnskov and Axel Dreher

University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2007 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of gender discrimination on individual life satisfaction using a cross-section of 66 countries. We employ measures of discrimination of women in the economy, in politics, and in society more generally. According to our results, discrimination in politics is important to individual well-being. Overall, men and women are more satisfied with their lives when societies become more equal. Disaggregated analysis suggests that our results for men are driven by the effect of equality on men with middle and high incomes, and those on the political left. To the contrary, women are more satisfied with increasing equality independent of income and political ideology. Equality in economic and family matters does overall not affect life satisfaction. However, women are more satisfied with their lives when discriminatory practices have been less prevalent in the economy 20 years ago.

Keywords: Gender gap; happiness; well-being; discrimination; life satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2007-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2007/DP-07-Fi.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: On Gender Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Does Discrimination Matter? (2007)
Working Paper: On Gender Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Does Discrimination Matter? (2007)
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:usg:dp2007:2007-07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2007 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joerg Baumberger ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).