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Long Term Trends in Life Satisfaction, 1973–2012: Flanders in Europe

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Abstract

In this paper we focus on temporal heterogeneity of overall life satisfaction. Using repeated Eurobarometer Surveys from the period 1973–2012 and multilevel hierarchical age period cohort regression, trend, life-cycle and cohort effects are disentangled. In Flanders, the trend fluctuations are stronger than the life-cycle effects and there are hardly any generation effects. In other countries, by contrast, there are few or no trend fluctuations, but rather signs of a generational change. The international heterogeneity is particularly large and these international differences are stronger than the temporal ones. It remains unclear what factors from the macro-context lie at the basis of the observed international differences.

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Notes

  1. NUTS (Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques) is a system for the division of the territory of the European Union, the so-called NUTS regions. NUTS 1 regions contain 3–7 million inhabitants.

  2. The trend variables have been harmonized with respect to variable names, variable and value labels, coding over time and weighting factors.

  3. Luxembourg is not included in the analysis because of the low number of respondents.

  4. Thalidomide, popular with pregnant women at the end of the 1950s as a cure for morning sickness and as a sedative, caused about 10,000 newborns to have serious defects such as missing or underdeveloped limbs.

  5. The estimated period effects equal the sum of the intercept and the period-specific random effect.

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  1. Research Centre of the Flemish Government, Boudewijnlaan 30, bus 23, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Marc Callens

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  1. Marc Callens
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Callens, M. Long Term Trends in Life Satisfaction, 1973–2012: Flanders in Europe. Soc Indic Res 130, 107–127 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1134-z

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