Many economists and educators favour public support for education on the premise that education imporves the overall well-being of citizens. However, little is known about the casual pathwasy through which education shapes people's subjective well-being (SWB). This paper explores the direct and...

Very little is known about how the differential treatment of sexual minorities could influence subjective reports of overall well-being. This paper seeks to fill this gap. Data from two large surveys that provide nationally representative samples for two different countries – Australia (the...

This study estimates the causal effect of schooling on health behaviors. Using changes in the minimum school leaving age laws that varied by birth year and states in Australia from age 14 to 15 as a source of exogenous variation in schooling, the instrumental variables (IV) regression estimates...

This study examines the impact of involuntary job loss on the mental health of family members. Estimates from fixed-effects panel data models, using panel data for Australia, provide little evidence of any negative spillover effect on the mental health of husbands as a result of their wives’...

We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production,...

Empirical studies, especially in the US and UK, have consistently reported that rates of involuntary job separation, or dismissal, are significantly lower among female employees than among males. Only rarely, however, have the reasons for this differential been the subject of detailed...

This paper provides a statistical overview of three new cognitive ability measures collected in wave 12 of the HILDA Survey: (i) Backwards Digit Span; (ii) the Symbol Digits Modalities Test; and (iii) a 25-item version of the National Adult Reading Test. The paper: analyses willingness to...

We investigate the impact of short-term weather and long-term climate on self-reported life satisfaction using panel data. We find robust evidence that day-to-day weather variation impacts life satisfaction by a similar magnitude to acquiring a mild disability. Utilizing two sources of variation...

In May 2004, the Australian government announced a "Baby Bonus" policy, paying women an initial A$3,000 per new child. We use household panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (N = 14,932) and a simultaneous equations approach to analyze the effects of this...

This paper uses longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (or HILDA) Survey to examine the extent to which the relatively high rates of transition from low-paid employment into unemployment are the result of disadvantageous personal characteristics or are...