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Investigating the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification

Frijters, Paul; Haisken-DeNew, John P.; & Shields, Michael A. (2004). Investigating the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. Journal of Human Resources, 39(3), 649.

Frijters, Paul; Haisken-DeNew, John P.; & Shields, Michael A. (2004). Investigating the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. Journal of Human Resources, 39(3), 649.

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This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. We implement a new fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel and find negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation, and time spent in hospital, while we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction to which increased household incomes contributed around 12 percent. Most of the improvement is explained by better average circumstances, such as greater political freedom. For West Germans, we find little change in average life satisfaction over this period.




JOUR



Frijters, Paul
Haisken-DeNew, John P.
Shields, Michael A.



2004


Journal of Human Resources

39

3

649






0022-166X

10.3368/jhr.XXXIX.3.649



1094