Personality is the strongest and most consistent cross-sectional predictor of high subjective well-being. Less predictive economic factors, such as higher income or improved job status, are often the focus of applied subjective well-being research due to a perception that they can change whereas...

The importance of panel, or longitudinal, survey data for analyzing subjective wellbeing, and especially its dynamics, is increasingly recognized. Analyses of such data, however, have to deal with two potential problems: (1) non-random attrition; and (2) panel conditioning. The former is a much...