Back to baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the BHPS

Pre-print, Working paper: We look for evidence of adaptation of well-being to major life events in sixteen waves of British panel data. We find that, with the exception of unemployment, adaptation to other life events including marriage, divorce, birth of a child and widowhood is rapid and complete. These findings are remarkably similar to those found in previous analysis of German panel data. Equally, the time profiles of well-being as measured by life satisfaction data are very close to those from the analysis of a twelve-item scale of psychological functioning. As such, the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being only found in German data or using single-item measures. Last, we uncover some systematic differences in adaptation profiles according to "Big Five" personality measures.

Author(s)

Andrew E. Clark, Yannis Georgellis

Date of publication
  • 2010
Keywords JEL
I31 J12 J13 J63 J64
Keywords
  • Life Satisfaction
  • Anticipation
  • Adaptation
  • Baseline satisfaction
  • Labour market and life events
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2010-02
Version
  • 1