Abstract
The evidence for a correlation between life satisfaction and job satisfaction is strong; however, it is mostly based on cross-sectional results, which precludes establishing valid causal links between work and well-being. Limited longitudinal research suffers from relatively small sample sizes, narrow focus on a particular professional or national group, and differences in the lags between the waves of data examined. We address these issues by using three national, representative longitudinal studies with up to 30 years of repeated annual measurements of job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Using data from 216,573 individuals and applying panel vector autoregression models, we seek to establish whether, and to what extent, job satisfaction influences subsequent life satisfaction and life satisfaction has a concurrent impact on subsequent job satisfaction. Our findings corroborate that life satisfaction and job satisfaction are positively and reciprocally related, as in the spillover theory, and that life satisfaction influences job satisfaction more strongly than vice versa. The magnitude of the impact is found to be population-specific and time sensitive, with the highest effect in the subsequent year and with statistically significant effects lasting even up to 5 years. Gender, age, education, and household member status were found to differentiate the strength of the relationship.
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Notes
The paradox implies that despite age-related declines in, for example, health or income, many older people maintain high subjective well-being in later life (Swift et al. 2014). The U-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction was confirmed for the British population using the BHPS (the same dataset that we use) (Baird et al. 2010); however, less evidence on this point was found for the German population using G-SOEP (the same dataset that we use) (Baird et al. 2010).
In two cases models with more lags had the same coefficient of determination. In those cases, we decided to select lower lag order as the most parsimonious solution.
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Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and support. Authors declare that they contributed equally to the manuscript. The data reported in this manuscript were obtained from three publicly available databases: (1) Swiss Household Panel (SHP), which is based at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences FORS. The project is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation; https://forscenter.ch/projects/swiss-household-panel/. (2) United Kingdom – Longitudinal Household Study - University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research, NatCen Social Research, Kantar Public. (2018). Understanding Society: Waves 1-7, 2009-2016 and Harmonised BHPS: Waves 1-18, 1991-2009. 10th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 6614, https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-6614-11. (3) German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), data for years 1984-2016, version 3y, SOEP, 2018, https://www.diw.de/en/diw_02.c.222516.en/data.html.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
1.1 Panel Attrition
High panel attrition leads to non-random censoring of dynamic processes and thus is a risk factor that might reduce the value of data and contribute to lack of consistency of estimators in the analysis (Behr et al. 2005; Lillard and Panis 1998). However, with low attrition in large panel survey non-random censoring leads usually to very minor biases (Lillard and Panis 1998).
With respect to the BHPS, study attrition rates were at the level of 10–20% with an exception of a single year in which the BHPS and UKLHS surveys merged, when the attrition rate increased to around 50%. Attrition in the GSOEP was usually below 20%, with an average attrition rate of only 10% in subsequent waves. The attrition rates were at the lowest levels in the 1990s, where only about 7% of respondents dropped out of the sample between consecutive waves. The SHP started in 1999; however, longitudinal information on life satisfaction and job satisfaction measures is available only from 2005. The attrition of the panel amounted to only 6–13%, with particularly low attrition rates in the first waves of the survey.
All three surveys seem to be satisfactory in terms of the attrition rates, with the exception of a single wave of the British study corresponding to the transition year between the BHPS and UKLHS surveys. To account for the close to 50% attrition rate observed at that moment and also to take into account minor changes in labeling in the job satisfaction and life satisfaction questions, an additional analysis was run (separately for UKLHS) to test the robustness of the results. For SHP and G-SOEP we conducted robustness checks by splitting the sample in half. The results (available upon request from the corresponding author) confirmed the results obtained on complete datasets and thus provided additional evidence for the robustness of the results.
Appendix 2
Significance of differences in PVAR coefficient estimates between countries subject to analysis.
Countries significantly different with respect to estimated coefficients
Dependent variable → | Job satisfaction t | Life satisfaction t |
|---|---|---|
Age | ||
Below 35 | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | nsd |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | UK-German |
Between 35 and 54 | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | UK-German German-Swiss |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | asd | asd |
55 or more | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | nsd |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German | UK-German |
Gender | ||
Male | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | nsd |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | UK-German UK-Swiss |
Female | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German | asd |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German German-Swiss | asd |
Household member status | ||
Head | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | asd |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | asd | UK-German German-Swiss |
Not head | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | German -Swiss |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German | nsd |
Education | ||
No higher degree | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | UK-German German-Swiss |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | asd | asd |
Higher degree | ||
Job satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German UK-Swiss | UK-German |
Life satisfaction t − 1 | UK-German | UK-German UK-Swiss |
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Bialowolski, P., Weziak-Bialowolska, D. Longitudinal Evidence for Reciprocal Effects Between Life Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction. J Happiness Stud 22, 1287–1312 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00273-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00273-1