What drives the subjective feeling of well-being in old age?
Empirical analysis and comparison of different measures to improve subjective well-being
- Life satisfaction
- Look back on life with happiness
- Meaningful life
Development of testable hypotheses for evaluation of experience and circumstances at different measures of subjective well-being (SWB)
Influence of present circumstances vs. past events
Data basis:
SHARE: Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, http://www.share-project.org/data-access.html
(data can be either be accessed individually or delivered for this assignment only)
Introductory literature (attached):
Clark, A. (2015). Is Happiness the Best Measure of Well-Being? Mimeo: Paris School of Economics.
Baumeister, R.F., K.D. Vohs, J.L. Aaker and E.N. Garbinsky (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6): 505–16.
Topic belongs to:
new/modern political economy, public choice, public economics, economic behavior model
Important:
- Autor should best know how to use Excel, R (www.r-project.org) or, less welcome, Strata
- Thesis should consist of 20 pages, max. 8’000 words (appendix and references excluded)
- On Tuesday, October 6th, I need a disposition on 2-3 powerpoint slides or on a word document for a 5 minute presentation. It should include:
o Description and limitation of the problem
o Structured presentation of the ideas (“in the main part this and that will be done” etc), possibly a screenshot of the data from Stata or Excel
o Connection to the scientific literature (study of literature)
o Further planned working steps and structure - Deadline for completion is November 15th
- Will also need 10 slides for a 15-minute presentation of the work by then, with following contents:
o Short presentation of the topic
o Problem definition
o Red thread of the thesis
o Most important arguments and findings
o Reference to open questions or problems encountered while working