'Labor Union Membership and Life Satisfaction'
Via a tweet from Bruce Bartlett:
Labor Union Membership and Life Satisfaction in the United States, by Patrick Flavin and Gregory Shufeldt: Abstract While a voluminous literature examines the effects of organized labor on workers’ wage and benefit levels in the United States, there has been little investigation into whether membership in a labor union directly contributes to a higher quality of life. Using data from the World Values Survey, we uncover evidence that union members are more satisfied with their lives than those who are not members and that the substantive effect of union membership on life satisfaction rivals other common predictors of quality of life. Moreover, we find that union membership boosts life satisfaction across demographic groups regardle ss if someone is rich or poor, male or female, young or old, or has a high or low level of education. These results suggest that organized labor in the United States can have significant implications for the quality of life that citizens experience.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at 10:45 AM in Economics, Unions |
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