Thursday, 25 March 2010: 17:25
A recent paper (Clark et al., 2008) was arguably one of the first to trace out systematically the pattern of well-being leading up to and following a number of significant labour-market and life events, using large-scale long-run panel data. Their analysis sample of over 130,000 person-year observations in twenty waves of German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) data revealed significant lags and lead effects. However, while the patterns in well-being were reasonably similar for men and women, they did differ noticeably between events. Complete adaptation was found for marriage, divorce, widowhood, birth of child, and layoff. The exception is unemployment, for which there was only little evidence of adaptation.
The information provided in Clark et al. is novel, but inspires a number of questions. First, are these striking patterns of adaptation (or not) specific toGermany , or are they broadly representative? Second, the analysis was based on a single-item measure of well-being (life satisfaction). In the light of the strong preference expressed by Psychologists for multi-item measures of individual well-being, should single-item results be regarded with some suspicion?
This paper brings some responses to both of these questions. While we do not have harmonised data over a variety of countries that will allow us to replicate the analysis in Clark et al. (which requires relatively long-run panel data including a measure of individual overall subjective well-being), we can apply the method used for the GSOEP data to another well-known long-run panel survey: the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This latter does include (at least from Wave Six onwards) an overall life satisfaction question similar to that used by Clark et al. for the analysis of the GSOEP data. However, it also includes a psychological measure of mental stress (the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, or GHQ-12). Our results suggest that the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being only found in German data or using single-item measures. Specifically, the adaptation graphs that result from our analysis of the BHPS data are remarkably similar to those found in previous analysis of the GSOEP.
The information provided in Clark et al. is novel, but inspires a number of questions. First, are these striking patterns of adaptation (or not) specific to
This paper brings some responses to both of these questions. While we do not have harmonised data over a variety of countries that will allow us to replicate the analysis in Clark et al. (which requires relatively long-run panel data including a measure of individual overall subjective well-being), we can apply the method used for the GSOEP data to another well-known long-run panel survey: the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This latter does include (at least from Wave Six onwards) an overall life satisfaction question similar to that used by Clark et al. for the analysis of the GSOEP data. However, it also includes a psychological measure of mental stress (the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, or GHQ-12). Our results suggest that the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being only found in German data or using single-item measures. Specifically, the adaptation graphs that result from our analysis of the BHPS data are remarkably similar to those found in previous analysis of the GSOEP.