TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Frijters, Paul
AU  - New, John de
AU  - Shields, Michael A.
        TI  - The Value of Reunification in Germany: An Analysis of Changes in Life Satisfaction
        PY  - 2002/Jan/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 419
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp419
        AB  - We quantify the value of changes in life circumstances in Germany following reunification. To
this end, we develop and implement a fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the
German Socio-Economic Panel. We find strong negative effects on life satisfaction from
being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation and time spent in
hospital, whilst we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal
decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement
in life satisfaction after 1990 to which increased household incomes contributed around 12%.
Most of the increase is explained by improved average circumstances, such as public
services. For West Germans, we find virtually no change in satisfaction between 1991 and
1999.
        KW  - random and fixed-effects
KW  - German reunification
KW  - Life satisfaction
KW  - panel
        ER  -