VID Colloquium
Happiness and Sex Difference in Life Expectancy
Junji Kageyama, Meikai University, Japan
Date: Tue, 1 March 2011 , Time: 16:00-17:00
The aim of this study is to test, at the aggregate level, the explanatory power of happiness on survival. Based on previous findings that psychological stress adversely affects survival and that its effect on survival is more severe for men, this study employs the difference in life expectancy between women and men, rather than the level itself, as the dependent variable. As long as psychological stress and happiness are negatively correlated, happiness is expected to have a greater impact on men’s life expectancy, and, thus, negatively influence the life expectancy gap. However, between happiness and the life expectancy gap, the causality is expected to run in both directions. For this reason, this study first investigates the reverse effect of the life expectancy gap on happiness, and demonstrates that the life expectancy gap negatively affects national average happiness by altering the women’s widowhood ratio. Since the widowed are, on average, less happy, an increase in the life expectancy gap which raises the women’s widowhood ratio lowers women’s average happiness. Taking this reverse causality into account, this paper shows that happiness is significant in explaining the cross-country differences in the life expectancy gap. As national average happiness declines, the sex difference in life expectancy increases. This result suggests that happiness has a significant impact on survival even at the aggregate level.
About the presenter
Junji Kageyama is an associate professor at Meikai University in Japan. He is an economist, and worked on topics related to demography and economics, such as the relationship between saving and longevity. But currently, he has been working on issues related to bio-evolutionary bases of preferences. He was a guest researcher at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock from April 2008 to March 2009.