Happiness and parental altruism in the United States

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between happiness and standard of living compared with kids and parents in the United States. Using General Social Survey (GSS) data from 1993 to 2010, I find that people who are poorer than their parents or those whose kids are worse off than them are unhappier than the people who have the same standard of living compared with their parents or kids. On the other hand, people who are richer than their parents and people who have richer kids are not significantly happier. These results might suggest that people in the United States are altruistic towards their children only if they are poorer than them but not if their children are richer.

Keywords:

• happiness
• parental altruism
• income

JEL Classification:

• D00
• D31
• D64
• I31

Acknowledgement

I thank Larry Kotlikoff and Semih Akçomak for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹ In GSS we do not have information on kids' happiness levels.

² Data set does not contain information on the state where the individual lives, that is why regional dummies are used.

³ This is not the best variable showing the income level as the highest income level 12 shows a family income of $25 000 or more, which is quite low compared with the high-income group's income in the United States.

⁴ The estimation results are available upon request.

⁵ The dependent variable is converted to a dummy variable which takes the value 1 if the individual is pretty happy or very happy and 0 if the individual is not too happy.