Arbeitspapier

Women’s optimism, the gender happiness equaliser: a case of South Africa

This paper investigates whether there is co-movement in subjective wellbeing (swb) gender gaps and objective wellbeing (owb) gender gaps over time and whether swb gender gaps are caused by gender differences in endowments or by the different ways men and women value the pre-mentioned. This is important, as global goals and national policy focus on the improvement of owb gender equality, ignoring the importance of swb gender equality. We use the NIDS dataset, comparing 2008 and 2017 data, and employ the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method in the analysis. We find i) the trends in owband swb gender gaps are unrelated and ii) the swb gender gaps are explained mainly by gender differences in endowments,but in 2017, due to women’s “optimism”, notwithstanding their lower levels of endowments, the swb between genders was equalised. These results indicate the need for a swb gender equality policy.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: GLO Discussion Paper ; No. 472

Classification
Wirtschaft
General Welfare; Well-Being
Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
Subject
Happiness gap
Gender
Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition
South Africa

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Greyling, Talita
Fisher, Bianca
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Global Labor Organization (GLO)
(where)
Essen
(when)
2020

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Greyling, Talita
  • Fisher, Bianca
  • Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Time of origin

  • 2020

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