Investigating the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. We implement a new fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel and find negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation, and time spent in hospital, while we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction to which increased household incomes contributed around 12 percent. Most of the improvement is explained by better average circumstances, such as greater political freedom. For West Germans, we find little change in average life satisfaction over this period.

Contributors to life satisfaction in parents of an adult child with Down syndrome

Aim: This study investigated: (1) concurrent relationships between measures of family life and parental satisfaction with life in parents of an adult with Down syndrome and (2) influence of early family functioning on current parental satisfaction. Method: Sixty-two families were interviewed using a semi-structured interview, and responded to a series of questionnaires related to family functioning when their child with Down syndrome was between 7 and 15 years. Fifteen years later parents were asked to provide data on their current situation, including mental health, and satisfaction and difficulties with respect to care-giving in relation to their adult child. Results: Over half the families provided data to the second phase of the study. Life circumstances were appreciably worse for a small group of families than had been the case 15 years previously; however, these changes were generally unrelated to their parenting role. Overall, parents reported experiencing satisfaction from their care-giving role and did not report high levels of difficulties emanating from this role. Conclusions: Most parents demonstrated good levels of personal functioning, although there was a small group for whom this was not the case. Earlier functioning did not make a strong contribution to current levels of life satisfaction.

What determines weight loss behaviour and body weight satisfaction in Australia? Evidence from the HILDA survey

This thesis undertakes an empirical investigation to identify factors that influence the decision to undertake weight loss behaviour using the nationally representative HILDA dataset. Although many factors influenced the decision, the findings suggested that body weight satisfaction was the greatest determinant of weight loss dieting. This thesis therefore conducted a further empirical study to analyse the determinants of body weight satisfaction. A rank-hypothesis was found to better predict variation in body weight satisfaction levels than the absolute value of the individual's Body Mass Index (BMI) or the relative-norm hypothesis, which are commonly reported in the literature.

Cross talk : collaborative indigenous life writing in Australia and Canada

This thesis argues that the critical reading of Indigenous life writing needs to move beyond its concern for power relations operating between the narrators and editors of collaboratively produced texts. It discusses the role of Indigenous families and communities in both the production and the reading of Indigenous texts.

The decision to demutualise : an analysis of the pressures for change. The case of life insurers in Australia and South Africa a comparative perspective

Since the 1980s a wave of demutualisations have occurred across a range of industries from stock exchanges to building societies, savings and loans associations and insurers. In both Australia and South Africa this has had a marked effect on the life insurance markets which had been dominated by mutual life insurers for 150 years. This paper adopts a case study approach to analyse the key drivers of organisational change. It examines the experiences of the Australian Mutual Provident (Australia’s oldest and largest life insurance mutual) and Sanlam (the second largest mutual life office in South Africa) as they proceeded down the path to demutualisation. It suggests a complex array of factors combined to place pressure on the existing mutual structures.

Employee voice and job satisfaction in Australia: the centrality of direct voice

This study examines the relationship between employee voice and job satisfaction using data from the 2007 Australian Workplace Representation Survey (AWRPS) of 1,022 employees. Drawing on human resource management and industrial relations literature, we test hypotheses concerning the relationship between direct and union voice arrangements and job satisfaction. This relationship represents a gap in the literature, which is important from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Controlling for a range of personal, job, and workplace characteristics, regression analyses suggest that although evidence of voice complementarity exists, direct voice appears to be the central voice arrangement underpinning employees’ job satisfaction. The article concludes by highlighting the study’s implications for management practice and identifi es avenues for further research.

Marketing the message: the making of the Market for Life Insurance in Australia, 1850–1940

During the late nineteenth century, sales of life insurance products in Australia increased at a rapid rate. An investigation of the way in which life insurance products were targeted to the consumers provides insights not only into the marketing approaches, but also the changing nature of the mutual organization. This article uses a “stages” approach to analyze the evolution of the marketing message. The experience of Australian mutual insurers suggests that marketing strategies, as with other types of organizational skills, evolve in response to both the prevailing business environment and the ability of the firm to acquire and implement new knowledge and ways of conducting business.

Adolescents’ willingness for intergenerational support: Relations to maternal expectations and mothers’ life satisfaction in 14 cultures

How is adolescents’ willingness for intergenerational support affected by parents’ expectations and parenting behavior? Does youths’ willingness for intergenerational support in turn affect parents’ well-being? The current study addresses these questions from a cross-cultural perspective, using data from connected samples of mother-adolescent dyads (N = 4162) from 14 diverse cultural contexts as part of the “Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations Study” (Trommsdorff & Nauck, 2005). The results are based on mixed model analyses (with culture as a random factor). Associations were investigated between family norms (expectations of support by adult children), parenting goals (obedience, independence) and parenting behavior (acceptance, control) reported by mothers and adolescents’ reports on willingness to support (help in household tasks, willingness to tolerate burdens in order to help their parents in case of accident, emotional support given to mothers and fathers). Across cultures, maternal expectations of adult children were positively related to adolescents’ reported household help and their current emotional support to mothers and fathers. Obedience, and control were positively related to the amount of adolescent help in the household, while independence and acceptance were related to a higher willingness to tolerate burdens as well as to higher emotional support given to the mother. Regarding associations between adolescents’ actual and intended intergenerational support with mothers’ life satisfaction, adolescents’ willingness to tolerate burdens was related to a higher maternal life satisfaction while adolescents’ reported household help was not. Adolescents’ current emotional support to fathers (but not to mothers) was also related to higher maternal life satisfaction. While most of the effects were stable across cultures (no significant random slope variance across cultural groups), some effects did significantly vary across cultures. Traditional-vs.-secular values as culture-level characteristics will be discussed as explanation for these culture-specific relations among mothers’ expectations, adolescents’ intergenerational support, and mothers’ life satisfaction.

Can Policy Make Us Happier? Individual characteristics socioeconomic factors, and life satisfaction in Central and Eastern Europe. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 22/November 2011

In the last decade, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have witnessed a rapid economic convergence vis-à-vis Western Europe. However, this rapid growth has not been matched by a similarly rapid increase in life satisfaction, which has remained low in the European context. This paper sets out to address this conundrum, by looking at the individual and macro-level determinants of individual life satisfaction in ten CEE countries. The results highlight that while Central and Eastern Europeans share the same individual determinants of happiness as people in the West (despite some significant cross-country variation), macroeconomic and institutional differences are the key factors behind the lack of convergence in life satisfaction. On the macroeconomic side, GDP growth is still a source of increasing well-being, but the happiness bonus associated with it is becoming smaller. The different levels of individual happiness in CEE are therefore mostly determined by institutional factors such as corruption, government spending and decentralisation, making policies aimed at enhancing institutional quality capable of bringing about substantial improvements in the overall life satisfaction of the people in the region.

The Quality of Society and Life Satisfaction in China

Peer reviewed