Effects of college education on demonstrated happiness in the United States

Abstract

Among the many documented benefits of a college education is a higher level of self-reported happiness. The present work considers instead the level of demonstrated happiness and unhappiness within groups, the latter proxied by the conditional probability of suicide within groups having a college education and those without. Those with college are not happier for it, in these terms, and actually have slightly higher rates of suicide than those without college, based on a recent US data.

Keywords:

• education
• happiness
• suicide
• logit

JEL Classification:

• A1
• I21
• J1

Notes

¹ Internationally, the idea that a college degree improves self-reported happiness has been harder to confirm empirically. Inglehart and Klingemann (2000) report statistically insignificant results, based on a panel of countries, and Heady and Wooden (2004) report insignificant results for Australia. For Denmark, Hartog and Oosterbeek (1998) report greatest happiness at medium levels of schooling – less than a Bachelor’s degree.

² We confirm, using US Census data, that post-secondary education enhances longevity for our full sample that consists of all major causes of death.

³ The 2006 NCHS Multiple Cause of Death Data are used as a robustness check. This is done to control for financial crises and their possible affect on the probability of suicides. The results are not sensitive irrespective of whether 2006 or 2010 data are used.

⁴ Conditional that death occurred.

⁵ Pseudo-R² of this regression is 0.3001.

⁶ All other independent variables are held at mean values.