The effects of education on spouse's satisfaction in Europe

Abstract

This paper identifies the effects of both own and spouse’s education levels on individual economic satisfaction for European households. To that end, it estimates several specifications based on the family collective approach, for each of the 14 EU countries, by using the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel-ECHP (1994-2001). After demonstrating that the IV Hausman-Taylor procedure is the selected estimation method in the majority of cases, the empirical results show that male and female income satisfaction significantly increases when the husband achieves higher education qualifications in the majority of European countries. However, the positive effect of the wife’s higher education on female income satisfaction only appears in a very limited number of countries. Additionally, increases in individual wage and non-wage incomes generally lead to higher satisfaction levels.