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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research ; No. 1192

Classification and Topics

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

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bertermann, Alexander ; Kamhöfer, Daniel A. ; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/278805
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET