TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bertermann, Alexander
AU  - Kamhöfer, Daniel A.
AU  - Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
        TI  - More Education Does Make You Happier – Unless You Are Unemployed
        PY  - 2023/Sep/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 16454
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp16454
        AB  - This paper investigates the causal effect of education on life satisfaction, exploring effect heterogeneity along employment status. We use exogenous variation in compulsory schooling requirements and the build-up of new, academically more demanding schools, shifting educational attainment along the entire distribution of schooling. Leveraging plant closures and longitudinal information, we also address the endogeneity of employment status. We find a positive effect of education on life satisfaction for employed individuals, but a negative one for those without a job. We propose an aspiration-augmented utility function as a unifying explanation for the asymmetric effect of education on life satisfaction.

        KW  - education
KW  - life satisfaction
KW  - employment status
KW  - compulsory schooling reforms
KW  - school openings
KW  - instrumental variable estimation
        ER  -