Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/109999 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 808
Publisher: 
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Abstract: 
Unemployment has been robustly shown to strongly decrease subjective well-being (or "happiness"). In the present paper, we use panel quantile regression techniques in order to analyze to what extent the negative impact of unemployment varies along the subjective well-being distribution. In our analysis of British Household Panel Survey data (1996-2008) we find that, over the quantiles of our subjective well-being variable, individuals with high well-being suffer less from becoming unemployed. A similar but stronger effect of unemployment is found for a broad mental well-being variable (GHQ-12). For happy and mentally stable individuals, it seems their higher well-being acts like a safety net when they become unemployed. We explore these findings by examining the heterogeneous unemployment effects over the quantiles of satisfaction with various life domains.
Subjects: 
Subjective Well-being
Unemployment
Quantile Analysis
Heterogeneity
British Household Panel Survey
Domain Satisfaction
JEL: 
I31
J01
J64
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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