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Subjective measures of well-being, such as happiness, occupy a rapidly growing body in the academic literature. However, how happiness levels are distributed across populations and social groups is less well known, especially in the context of developing countries. In this paper, I study happiness inequality at the district level in Ecuador, considering diverse domains of individual satisfaction. Concretely, I calculate Gini coefficients for happiness domains and identify the determinants of happiness inequality levels using a panel dataset for 584 districts over three years. The findings show that happiness inequality is lower regarding overall satisfaction and satisfaction with marital status and social life and higher regarding work and financial conditions, and the government. The results also suggest that average happiness level and income inequality are consistent determinants of happiness inequality. Lastly, I divide the sample by gender, place of residence, ethnicity and education levels to explore the differences across population groups. Policy discussion and implications follow the quantitative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student satisfaction is a crucial determinant of success in online education, but studies on satisfaction with virtual classes during the COVID-19 outbreak are still scarce. This research contributes empirical evidence regarding the determinants of overall satisfaction with online classes and academic performance through the domain satisfaction approach. Additionally, we introduce to the psychological literature the two-layer model, a well-known econometric methodology, to estimate the effect of domain satisfaction while controlling the impact of unobserved individual differences. Our analyses are based on a cross-sectional sample of n = 648 Chilean university students (53.4% female) surveyed at the end of the first academic semester of 2021, during the lockdown mandated by the Chilean government due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that satisfaction with the support provided by the university, satisfaction with learning, and satisfaction with the perceived quality of the online classes significantly explain the 68% of the variance of satisfaction with the virtual classes experience. Furthermore, satisfaction with academic performance is significantly explained by satisfaction with grades, learning, and the perceived quality of the online classes (R2 = .65). We also explore heterogeneous effects, separating them by gender and geographic area, and find that domains that systematically impact students’ satisfaction with online education are satisfaction with grades, learning, and the quality of classes.

Longitudinal studies have documented improvements in parents' life satisfaction due to childbearing, followed by postpartum adaptation back to baseline. However, the details underlying this process remain largely unexplored. Based on past literature, set-point theory, and results from an exploratory sample, we investigated empirically how first childbirth affected satisfaction with specific domains of life. In a preregistered study, we compared parents with matched childless respondents in their trajectories of life satisfaction, and also satisfaction with family life, health, sleep, work, housework, leisure, dwelling, household income, and personal income. First-time parents and childless respondents were matched in a procedure combining exact and propensity score matching. Using the population-representative German SOEP data (N = 3,370), longitudinal multilevel models revealed heterogeneous effects of childbirth on different domains of satisfaction: Both mothers' and fathers' satisfaction with family life increased temporarily in a similar fashion to life satisfaction before going back to baseline within five years after childbirth. However, only mothers experienced drastic losses to satisfaction with sleep and satisfaction with personal income. For the remaining domains, parents' satisfaction largely resembled that of the matched childless respondents. These divergent domain trajectories underscore the need for multivariate analyses in life satisfaction research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]