Heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing: An application to occupational allocation in Africa

TY - JOUR

T1 - Heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing: An application to occupational allocation in Africa

AU - Falco, Paolo

AU - Maloney, William F.

AU - Rijkers, Bob

AU - Sarrias, Mauricio

PY - 2015/3/1

Y1 - 2015/3/1

N2 - By exploiting recent advances in mixed (stochastic parameter) ordered probit estimators and a unique longitudinal dataset from Ghana, this paper examines the distribution of subjective wellbeing across sectors of employment. We find little evidence for the overall inferiority of the small firm informal sector relative to the formal salaried sector at the conditional mean. Moreover, the estimated underlying random parameter distributions unveil substantial latent heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing around the central tendency that fixed parameter models cannot detect. All job categories contain substantial shares of both relatively happy and disgruntled workers.

AB - By exploiting recent advances in mixed (stochastic parameter) ordered probit estimators and a unique longitudinal dataset from Ghana, this paper examines the distribution of subjective wellbeing across sectors of employment. We find little evidence for the overall inferiority of the small firm informal sector relative to the formal salaried sector at the conditional mean. Moreover, the estimated underlying random parameter distributions unveil substantial latent heterogeneity in subjective wellbeing around the central tendency that fixed parameter models cannot detect. All job categories contain substantial shares of both relatively happy and disgruntled workers.

KW - Africa

KW - Developing country labor markets

KW - Informality

KW - Mixed ordered probit

KW - Self-employment

KW - Subjective wellbeing

UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/heterogeneity-subjective-wellbeing-application-occupational-allocation-africa

U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.12.022

DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.12.022

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0167-2681

VL - 111

SP - 137

EP - 153

JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

ER -