Collective happiness: labour union membership and life satisfaction

Abstract

Labour union membership is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction in low-income countries, but not in high-income countries. Evidence suggests that union membership affects life satisfaction in low-income countries through better working conditions.

Keywords:

• labour unions
• life satisfaction
• working conditions

JEL Classification:

• J8
• J5

Notes

¹  GDP per capita and average annual unemployment rate are from the World Development Indicators.

² Although we only report detailed results for a specification mirroring that in Column 1, the high-income/low-income comparison yields similar conclusions in both the specification with additional interaction terms and without.

³ See also Robinson (1991) and Botsch (1993) for specific examples of the role of worker movements in improving workplace safety.

⁴ The inclusion of the accident variable does reduce the sample size. However, estimating the specification in Column 1 on the reduced sample still yields a positive and significant coefficient on union membership.

⁵ We attempted to use both the average per cent of workers in unions and the average confidence that people in a country have in unions as instruments for individual union memberships. We obtain qualitatively similar results; however, neither of those variables satisfies the exclusion restriction in the instrumental variables estimation and are therefore not valid instruments.