More education does make you happier - unless you are unemployed

Arbeitspapier

This paper investigates the causal effect of education on life satisfaction, exploring effect heterogeneity along employment status. We use exogenous variation in compulsory schooling requirements and the build-up of new, academically more demanding schools, shifting educational attainment along the entire distribution of schooling. Leveraging plant closures and longitudinal information, we also address the endogeneity of employment status. We find a positive effect of education on life satisfaction for employed individuals, but a negative one for those without a job. We propose an aspiration-augmented utility function as a unifying explanation for the asymmetric effect of education on life satisfaction.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research ; No. 1192

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Returns to Education ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Single Equation Models: Single Variables: Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
• Thema: Education ; Life satisfaction ; Employment status ; Compulsory schooling reforms ; School openings ; Instrumental variable estimation

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Bertermann, Alexander ; Kamhöfer, Daniel A. ; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (wo): Berlin
• (wann): 2023

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/278805
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ