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Monday, May 18, 2009

"The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness"

Why has women's happiness declined relative to men's?:

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, NBER Working Paper No. 14969, May 2009 [open link]: Abstract By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.

    Posted by on Monday, May 18, 2009 at 01:09 AM in Academic Papers, Economics | Permalink  TrackBack (0)  Comments (80)

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