TY - JOUR
T1 - From Average Joe's happiness to Miserable Jane and Cheerful John
T2 - Using quantile regressions to analyze the full subjective well-being distribution
AU - Binder, M.
AU - Coad, Alexander Jean-Luc
PY - 2011/8/1
Y1 - 2011/8/1
N2 - Standard regression techniques are only able to give an incomplete picture of the relationship between subjective well-being and its determinants since the very idea of conventional estimators such as OLS is the averaging out over the whole distribution: studies based on such regression techniques thus are implicitly only interested in Average Joe's happiness. Using cross-sectional data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the year 2006, we apply quantile regressions to analyze effects of a set of explanatory variables on different quantiles of the happiness distribution and compare these results with a standard regression. Among our results we observe a decreasing importance of income, health status and social factors with increasing quantiles of happiness. Another finding is that education has a positive association with happiness at the lower quantiles but a negative association at the upper quantiles. We explore the robustness of our findings in various ways.
AB - Standard regression techniques are only able to give an incomplete picture of the relationship between subjective well-being and its determinants since the very idea of conventional estimators such as OLS is the averaging out over the whole distribution: studies based on such regression techniques thus are implicitly only interested in Average Joe's happiness. Using cross-sectional data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the year 2006, we apply quantile regressions to analyze effects of a set of explanatory variables on different quantiles of the happiness distribution and compare these results with a standard regression. Among our results we observe a decreasing importance of income, health status and social factors with increasing quantiles of happiness. Another finding is that education has a positive association with happiness at the lower quantiles but a negative association at the upper quantiles. We explore the robustness of our findings in various ways.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79960900404&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.02.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.02.005
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:79960900404
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 79
SP - 275
EP - 290
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
IS - 3
ER -