Parents Transmit Happiness Along with Associated Values and Behaviors to their Children - A Lifelong Happiness Dividend?

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for 'children' who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of values and behaviors known to be associated with happiness (Headey, Wagner and Muffels, 2010, 2012). These values and behaviors include giving priority to pro-social and family values, rather than material values, maintaining a preferred balance between work and leisure, active social and community participation, and regular exercise. Both parents have about equal influence on the values and behaviors which children adopt. However, the life satisfaction of adult 'children' continues to be directly influenced by the life satisfaction of their mothers, with the influence of fathers being only indirect, via transmission of values and behaviors. There appears to be a lifelong happiness dividend (or unhappiness dividend) due to parenting. Structural equation models with two-way causation indicate that the life satisfaction of offspring can significantly affect the satisfaction of their parents, as well as vice-versa, long after the 'children' have left home. Data come from 25 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP, 1984-2008). SOEP is the only panel survey worldwide in which data on life satisfaction have been obtained from parents and an adequate sub-sample of children no longer living in the parental home

Life satisfaction amongst police officers working in the area of child abuse investigation

Child abuse investigation is an area of work reported to be associated with high levels of work stress. This potentially places professionals at risk of psychological harm and may lead to lower life satisfaction than in the general population. The current study examined this issue within a large sample of Australian police officers. Specifically, 214 officers working in the area of child abuse investigation responded to a single global measure of life satisfaction (LS) known to be highly related to other measures of subjective wellbeing as well as clinical depression. The results revealed that, irrespective of the officers&rsquo; gender or degree of exposure to child abuse cases, the mean score from LS score was within the expected adult normative range. Further, the overall incidence of low LS in this sample (1.9 per cent) was not significantly different from the general population (4.3 per cent). The implications of these findings for police organisations are discussed.<br /

Capabilities and Choices: Do They Make Sen'Se for Understanding Objective and Subjective Well-Being?: An Empirical Test of Sen's Capability Framework on German and British Panel Data

In Sen's Capability Approach (CA) well-being can be defined as the freedom of choice to achieve the things in life which one has reason to value most for his or her personal life. Capabilities are in Sen's vocabulary therefore the real freedoms people have or the opportunities available to them. In this paper we examine the impact of capabilities alongside choices on subjective and objective well-being. There is a lot of theoretical work on Sen's capability framework but still a lack of empirical research in measuring and testing his capability model especially in a dynamic perspective. The aim of the paper is to elaborate and test a "stock-flow" model measuring capabilities and choices to explain longer-term changes in well-being using 25 years of German and 18 years of British data. Three measures of well-being are constructed: life satisfaction for subjective well-being (SWB) and relative income and employment security for objective well-being (OWB). We ran random and fixed effects GLS models. The findings strongly support Sen's capabilities framework and provide new evidence on the way capabilities and choices matter for well-being. Capabilities indicated by human capital, trust, altruism and risk taking, and family, work-leisure, lifestyle and social choices show to strongly affect the three well-being indicators but their effect sizes differ largely dependent on the type of indicator used

Mental Health of Parents and Life Satisfaction of Children: A Within-Family Analysis of Intergenerational Transmission of Well-Being

This paper addresses the extent to which there is an intergenerational transmission of mental health and subjective well-being within families. Specifically it asks whether parents’ own mental distress influences their child’s life satisfaction, and vice versa. Whilst the evidence on daily contagion of stress and strain between members of the same family is substantial, the evidence on the transmission between parental distress and children’s well-being over a longer period of time is sparse. We tested this idea by examining the within-family transmission of mental distress from parent to child’s life satisfaction, and vice versa, using rich longitudinal data on 1,175 British youths. Results show that parental distress at year t-1 is an important determinant of child’s life satisfaction in the current year. This is true for boys and girls, although boys do not appear to be affected by maternal distress levels. The results also indicated that the child’s own life satisfaction is related with their father’s distress levels in the following year, regardless of the gender of the child. Finally, we examined whether the underlying transmission correlation is due to shared social environment, empathic reactions, or transmission via parent-child interaction

Choices Which Change Life Satisfaction: Similar Results for Australia, Britain and Germany

Using data from national socio-economic panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany, this paper analyzes the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that, in all three countries, preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work, social participation and healthy lifestyle have substantial and similar effects on life satisfaction. The results have negative implications for a widely accepted theory of SWB, set-point theory. This theory holds that adult SWB is stable in the medium and long term, although temporary fluctuations occur due to life events. Set-point theory has come under increasing criticism in recent years, primarily due to unmistakable evidence in the German Socio-Economic Panel that, during the last 25 years, over a third of the population has recorded substantial and apparently permanent changes in life satisfaction (Fujita and Diener, 2005; Headey, 2008a; Headey, Muffels and Wagner, 2010). It is becoming clear that the main challenge now for SWB researchers is to develop new explanations which can account for medium and long term change, and not merely stability in SWB. Set-point theory is limited precisely because it is purely a theory of stability. The paper is based on specially constructed panel survey files in which data are divided into multi-year periods in order to facilitate analysis of medium and long term change

Overall satisfaction with life

Abstract A good society is first of all a livable society and the livability of a society manifests in the life satisfaction of its members. Therefore improving society requires an understanding of life satisfaction, in particularly it requires to answer the following seven questions: 1) What is life satisfaction precisely? 2) Can life satisfaction be measured? 3) How satisfied are people presently with their life? 4) How do we assess how satisfied we are? 5) What conditions add to life-satisfaction? 6) Can life satisfaction be raised lastingly? 7) Should life-satisfaction be raised? Throughout the ages philosophers have toiled with these questions, and since the 1960's they have been subjected to empirical research. In this chapter we take stock of the progress that has been made in this fiel