1,721,053 research outputs found
Dispositional optimism and stock investments
Full text linkThis paper analyses the relationship between dispositional optimism and stock investments. Data are drawn from the second wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Dispositional optimism is found to be a relevant predictor of the ownership of stocks as well as of the share of gross financial wealth invested in this asset. The role of dispositional optimism is found to be stronger for risk tolerant agents and its relationship with the share of wealth invested in stocks varies with agents’ trust
The Long-Term Consequences of a Golden Nest: Socioeconomic Status in Childhood and the Age at Leaving Home
Full text linkThe age at leaving the parental home has significant implications for social and economic outcomes across the life course, highlighting the importance of examining nest-leaving patterns. We study the role of childhood standard of living on the age at nest leaving. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we show empirically that individuals who grow up in families with a higher socioeconomic status—that is, in a golden nest—leave the parental home later than others. Given that better-off individuals tend to obtain more education, and that young adults generally leave the parental home after completing their education, we also find that a higher level of education delays nest leaving. Nonetheless, the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and nest-leaving age still holds for given education levels, across European countries characterized by different cultural traits, for both males and females, and among urban and rural residents. We use a three-period life cycle model to show that this behavior is consistent with standard assumptions about preferences and resources if earnings increase with age. Moreover, habit-forming preferences that assume that utility depends on the gap between current and past consumption reinforce the delaying effect of a golden nest on nest leaving
Ageing and unused capacity in Europe: is there an early retirement trap?
No full textWe address the issue of how early retirement may interact with limited use of financial markets in producing financial hardship later in life, when some risks (such as long-term care) are not insured. We argue that the presence of financially attractive early retirement schemes in a world of imperfect financial and insurance markets can lead to an 'early retirement trap'. Indeed, Europe witnesses many (early) retired individuals in financial distress. In our analysis we use data on 10 European countries, which differ in their pension and welfare systems, in prevailing retirement age and in households' access to financial markets. We find evidence that an early retirement trap exists, particularly in some Southern and Central European countries: people who retired early in life are more likely to be in financial hardship in the long run. Our analysis implies that governments should stop making early retirement attractive, let retirees go back to work, improve access to financial markets and make sure long-term care problems are adequately insure
Are you satisfied now?
Full text linkAsking about life satisfaction in different ways can change reported measures of well-being
Is It True Love? Altruism Versus Exchange in Time and Money Transfers
Full text linkThis paper investigates what motivates intergenerational inter-vivos time and money transfers. We consider a model in which transfers may be driven not only by altruism, but also by exchange considerations. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to discriminate between the two motives. We show that both if we consider money transfers from parents to children and time transfers from children to parents, the empirical evidence rejects pure altruism in favor of exchange. This result has important policy implications on the effectiveness of formal care provision as a substitute for informal care and on the impact of taxation on transfers
Dispositional optimism and stock investments
Full text linkThis paper analyzes the relationship between dispositional optimism and stock investments, controlling for cognitive skills and personality traits such as trust, social interactions and risk aversion. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) on investors aged 50+ in twelve European countries. Our results show that dispositional optimism and personality matter for financial decisions. Optimism is positively and significantly related to both the ownership of stocks and the share of gross financial wealth invested in these assets and its role is especially relevant for risk tolerant investors and investors with little trust in others
Does Paternal Unemployment Affect Young Adult Offspring's Personality?
Full text linkUsing longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze
the impact of paternal unemployment on the “big five” personality traits of
young adult offspring aged 17–25. Results from longitudinal value-added models
for personality show that paternal unemployment makes offspring significantly
more conscientious and—to a smaller extent—less neurotic. The uncovered effects
are robust to the presence of selection on unobservables and correlation between
the error term and the lagged outcome.We also discuss heterogeneous effects
and the potential mechanisms behind our findings
Life satisfaction of immigrants: Does cultural assimilation matter?
Full text linkWe empirically assess the relationship between cultural assimilation and subjective well-being of immigrants by using the German Socio-Economic Panel, a longitudinal dataset including information on both the economic and non-economic conditions of the respondents. We find that the more immigrants identify with the German culture and fluently speak the national language, the more they report to be satisfied with their lives. This result is robust to several potential confounding factors, including a large number of individual variables (demographic, educational, social, economic and health), labour market outcomes and the external social conditions of the immigrant
Unpacking the determinants of life satisfaction: A survey experiment
Full text linkWe present results of a survey experiment aimed at assessing context effects on reporting life satisfaction, exerted by raising awareness of fundamental life domains before eliciting overall life satisfaction, through questionnaire manipulations. Psychologists refer to similar context effects, generated by providing more details about the object of a subsequent evaluation, as ‘unpacking effects’. The longitudinal structure of our experimental design allows us to assess the effects of the questionnaire manipulation both between and within subject. In our sample of university students, asking subjects to report satisfaction with life domains before reporting overall satisfaction with life generates a robust unpacking effect, as it shifts upwards the subsequent mean overall life satisfaction evaluations. In addition, raising awareness about life domains significantly increases reliability and validity of self-reported life satisfaction, by reducing the dispersion of responses and increasing the association between life satisfaction and life domain evaluations. We also detect heterogeneous effects across subgroups of our sample—such as people with children or in bad health—and discuss implications of these findings for research on life satisfaction
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