Testing happiness hypothesis among the elderly

We use a rich data set that allows us to test different happiness hypotheses employing four methodological approaches. We find that older people in Uruguay have a tendency to report themselves happy when they are married, when they have higher standards of health and when they earn higher levels of...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Cid, Alejandro, Ferrés, Daniel, Rossi, Máximo
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2008
Country:Colombia
Institution:Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Repository:Repositorio UN
Language:Spanish
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.unal.edu.co:unal/22780
Online Access:https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/22780
http://bdigital.unal.edu.co/13815/
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Happiness
Health
Family
Censored Econometric Models
Semiparametric Methods
Treatment Evaluation.
JEL: C14
C24
I10
J12
Description
Summary:We use a rich data set that allows us to test different happiness hypotheses employing four methodological approaches. We find that older people in Uruguay have a tendency to report themselves happy when they are married, when they have higher standards of health and when they earn higher levels of income or they consider that their income is suitable for their standard of living. On the contrary, they report lower levels of happiness when they live alone and when their nutrition is insufficient. We also find that education has no clear impact on happiness. We think that our study is a contribution to the study of those factors that can explain happiness among the elderly in Latin American countries. Future work will focus on enhanced empirical analysis and in extending our study to other countries.