Social leisure is generally found to be positively correlated with life satisfaction in the empirical literature. We ask if this association captures a genuine causal effect by using panel data from the GSOEP. Our identification strategy exploits the change in social leisure brought about by retirement, since the latter is an event after which the…

Mutual help has been often found to be beneficial for people's well-being in clinical settings. Research in the general population, however, is relatively limited, partly due to the lack of applicable measurement tools. The present study attempted to develop two scales to measure mutual help willingness and criteria and test their psychometric…

Child poverty has been widely discussed in Germany since the publication of the third official Poverty and Wealth Report of the German government in 2008 which--inter alia--focused on the situation of children and families. However, child poverty is not only caused by low household incomes and impacts of child poverty are not only restricted to…

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the…

Quality of housing plays one of the key roles in a public health research, since inadequate housing may have direct or indirect negative impact on health. Higher satisfaction with housing was shown to be associated with higher income, higher age, a smaller family, higher education, being female and being an owner of a dwelling. The aim of our…

This paper explores the relative importance of social factors and health measures in predicting educational achievement in early and late adolescence using population-based administrative data. The sample was made up of 41,943 children born in Manitoba, Canada between 1982 and 1989 and remaining in the province until age 18. Multilevel modeling…

The stratification system in India has resulted in the socioeconomic inequality in society and defines women domestic workers as one of the lowest segments of society. This qualitative and quantitative study aims at describing the problems of female domestic workers, the relationship of their employers with them, and exploring the impact of…

The paper has two parts. In the first part we offer a definition of well-being which makes life expectancy an explicit variable. We recognize the importance of happiness as a significant aspect of any definition of well-being, but we side-step the issue of what determines its level or how to measure it, and concentrate instead on the consequences…

China's oldest old population is estimated to quadruple by 2050. Yet, poverty rate for the oldest old has been the highest among all age groups in China. This paper investigates the relationship between economic stress, quality of life, and mortality among the oldest-old in China. Both objective economic hardships and perceived economic strain are…

This work explores differences in subjective well-being (SWB) between two samples. Survey data from Yunnan China was collected by Yang and Luo in 2003 and was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A second pilot data set was collected in Thailand during January and February 2007. Predictors of SWB were explored among the Yunnan sample as…

This study introduces the Satisfaction with Life Scale adapted for Children (SWLS-C) and presents psychometric findings regarding its validation. The SWLS-C was adapted from the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al. 1985), which is one of the most commonly used measures to assess satisfaction with life in adults. Three subject matter…

Two major educational expansions in Taiwan have resulted in a remarkable improvement of human capital accumulation for the last three decades, which is consistent with the long-run goal of education in improving individual well-being and international competitiveness. This study focuses on the expansion of higher education starting from the late…

Despite clear evidence that Americans' economic standard of living has improved over the last half-century in terms of income, ownership of technology and housing among other indicators, there is scant evidence from non-economic quality-of-life (QOL) indicators of improved life quality to parallel these economic gains. The present article adds to…

The focus of this paper is on a microeconomic analysis of the annual transition rate from temporary to permanent work of individual workers in Canada for the period 1999-2004. Given that a large proportion of temporary employment is involuntary, an understanding of the factors associated with the transition to permanent work may inform public…

The present study explored the short-term temporal characteristics of subjective well-being (SWB) and its potential correlates. Specifically, we examined the intra-individual variability and the trajectories of SWB and its components life satisfaction, positive, and negative affect. Over a two-week period, 27 participants (78% university students,…