Towards a Theory of Medium Term Life Satisfaction: Two-Way Causation Partly Explains Persistent Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction

Abstract

Long term panel data enable researchers to construct trajectories of life satisfaction (LS) for individuals over time. In this paper we analyse the trajectories of respondents (N = 3689) in the German Socio-Economic Panel who recorded their LS for 20 consecutive years in 1991–2010. Previous research has shown that at least a quarter of these respondents recorded substantial long term changes in LS (Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107.42:17922–17926, 2010a, in Soc Indic Res 112:725–748, 2013). In this paper, graphs of LS trajectories, and subsequent statistical analysis, show that respondents tend to spend multiple consecutive years above and, in other periods, below their own 20-year mea..