Disability and Subjective Well-being - Disentangling the Effect of Time-use and Emotional Affects

Type Working Paper
Title Disability and Subjective Well-being - Disentangling the Effect of Time-use and Emotional Affects
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2013
URL http://webmeets.com/files/papers/res/2014/125/DISABILITY_INGENHAAG.pdf
Abstract
The main goal of this study is to describe the association between disability and experienced well-being among older persons from different low and middle income countries. Specifically, we examine differences in the assessment of emotional affects and the allocation of time associated with disability applying the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman et al., 2004b). Disabled people report lower emotional affects during all activities. Disability is further associated with more time spent in leisure and self-care activities and less time in work-related activities. We then combine these results regarding emotional affects and time allocation associated with disability in order to analyze their interrelationship with experienced well-being. Average experienced well-being is lower for disabled individuals. However, the results provide evidence for partially compensatory effects of differences in time allocation and emotional affects associated with disability. We show that the substitution of less pleasant work-related activities by more pleasant leisure activities associated with disability partially compensates the negative effect of lower emotional affects on experienced well-being.

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