Life Satisfaction in Europe: Long Term Trends Explained

In our earlier research based on Eurobarometer micro-data for eight European countries/regions we have found that in Flanders net time trends for life satisfaction are more important than life cycle or generation effects. With each of the three temporal dimensions considered (trend, birth cohort and life cycle), one can associate different economical and/or sociological explanations.

In this paper we focus on the explanation of long-term life satisfaction trends across Europe. We do so by enriching Eurobarometer micro-data (1973-2015) with different macro-level time series (unemployment rates, gdp, …) and applying Multilevel Hierarchical Age Period Cohort analysis techniques to test various economical and sociological explanations (Easterlin-paradox, absolute income hypothesis,…). The findings are tested for robustness by comparing the results for alternative (hierarchical) models and different variable specifications.