Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/20027 
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 419
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We quantify the value of changes in life circumstances in Germany following reunification. To this end, we develop and implement a fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find strong negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation and time spent in hospital, whilst we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction after 1990 to which increased household incomes contributed around 12%. Most of the increase is explained by improved average circumstances, such as public services. For West Germans, we find virtually no change in satisfaction between 1991 and 1999.
Subjects: 
Life satisfaction
German reunification
random and fixed-effects
panel models
causal decomposition
JEL: 
C23
Z1
I31
C25
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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