The Midlife Crisis

This paper documents a longitudinal crisis of midlife among the inhabitants of rich nations. Yet middle-aged citizens in our datasets are close to their peak earnings, have typically experienced little or no illness, reside in some of the safest countries in the world, and live in the most prosperous era in human history. This is paradoxical and troubling. The finding is consistent, however, with the prediction—one little-known to economists—of Elliott Jaques (1965). Our analysis does not rest on elementary cross-sectional analysis. Instead, the paper uses panel and through-time data on, in total, approximately 500,000 individuals. It checks that the key results are not due to cohort effects. Nor do we rely on simple life satisfaction measures. The paper shows that there are approximately quadratic hill-shaped patterns in data on midlife suicide, sleeping problems, alcohol dependence, concentration difficulties, memory problems, intense job strain, disabling headaches, suicidal feelings, and extreme depression. We believe that the seriousness of this societal problem has not been grasped by the affluent world's policy-makers

Information Technologies and Subjective Well-Being: Does the Internet Raise Material Aspirations?

Existing work on the economics of well-being suggests that a person's subjective well-being depends to a large degree on his relative standing within his social environment. In this paper, we examine whether access to modern information and telecommunication technologies has an impact on relative concerns by raising material aspirations. We use cross-sectional data from the fifth wave of the World Values Survey and provide empirical evidence that people who regularly use the internet as a source of information derive relatively less life satisfaction from the same level of income. Using panel data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, we show that households in possession of a computer report needing significantly higher levels of income to make 'ends meet', given their actual level of income and a wide range of socio-economic characteristics. Our results corroborate the hypothesis that modern information technologies raise material aspirations via fostering relative concerns in the society. The empirical findings shed further light on the income-happiness paradox and identify a non-negligible channel how globalization might impact on subjective well-being

Illness and Health Satisfaction: The Role of Relative Comparisons

This paper investigates the role of relative comparisons in health status for individual health satisfaction. Previous research stresses the importance of interdependencies in subjective well-being and health arising from positional preferences and status e ects, social health norms, and comparison processes. Using representative longitudinal data from a German population survey, we estimate empirical health satisfaction models that take these interrelations into account. We find that positional preferences and social status effects in the context of health are rather unimportant for individual health satisfaction. Furthermore, higher levels of reference-group illness can temporarily alleviate the adverse impact of one's own illness on health satisfaction. This is also the first study to show the relevance of health-related upward and downward comparisons for health perception in the general population. The results suggest that upward comparisons are more important than downward comparisons and that becoming sicker than the reference group worsens health satisfaction

The effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions tailored to smoking parents of children aged 0-18 years: A meta-analysis

Contains fulltext : 228141.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Introduction: A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents of children aged 0-18 years. Methods: A systematic search was carried out in PsycInfo, Embase, and PubMed in March 2020. A manual search of the reference lists of the included studies and systematic reviews related to the topic was also performed. Two authors independently screened the studies based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) effect studies with control groups that examine smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents of children (0-18 years), and (2) full-text original articles written in English and published between January 1990 and February 2020. In total, 18 studies were included in the analyses. The TiDieR checklist and the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool 2.0 were used to extract data and to assess the risk of bias. Consensus among authors was reached at each stage. Results: Random-effects meta-analyses were performed. With a total number of 8,560 parents, the pooled relative risk was 1.62 (95% CI 1.38-1.90; p < 0.00001), showing a modest effect of the interventions on smoking cessation. Overall, 13.1% of the parents in the intervention conditions reported abstinence versus 8.4% of the parents in the control conditions. Discussion/Conclusion: Smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents are modestly effective. To increase the effectiveness and the impact of these interventions in terms of controlling tobacco use and public health, it is crucial for further research to explore how these interventions can be improved.16 p

The Effectiveness of Smoking Cessation Interventions Tailored to Smoking Parents of Children Aged 0-18 Years: A Meta-Analysis

Introduction:A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents of children aged 0-18 years. Methods: A systematic search was carried out in PsycInfo, Embase, and PubMed in March 2020. A manual search of the reference lists of the included studies and systematic reviews related to the topic was also performed. Two authors independently screened the studies based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) effect studies with control groups that examine smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents of children (0-18 years), and (2) full-text original articles written in English and published between January 1990 and February 2020. In total, 18 studies were included in the analyses. The TiDieR checklist and the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool 2.0 were used to extract data and to assess the risk of bias. Consensus among authors was reached at each stage. Results: Random-effects meta-analyses were performed. With a total number of 8,560 parents, the pooled relative risk was 1.62 (95% CI 1.38-1.90; p < 0.00001), showing a modest effect of the interventions on smoking cessation. Overall, 13.1% of the parents in the intervention conditions reported abstinence versus 8.4% of the parents in the control conditions. Discussion/Conclusion: Smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents are modestly effective. To increase the effectiveness and the impact of these interventions in terms of controlling tobacco use and public health, it is crucial for further research to explore how these interventions can be improved