Does work affect life satisfaction? Testing the relationship between job satisfaction, the work domain and life satisfaction.

Presenter: Andy Charlwood, University of Loughborough

Author: Andy Charlwood

Co-author(s): Mark Wooden

Life satisfaction is a key indicator of subjective wellbeing (SWB), which is related to a large number of mental and physical health outcomes. Despite its importance, the field of management does not have a ready answer to the question of how working conditions affect life satisfaction. This paper starts to provide that answer. Through fixed-effects two-stage least squares analysis of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, it is shown that there is evidence of a bottom-up relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction, whereby a change in job satisfaction is associated with a change in life satisfaction. Further, there is evidence that events in the work domain impact on life satisfaction; promotion and increases in autonomy at work are both positively associated with increases in life satisfaction. However, the quantitative size of these relationships is small, and the duration is short-lived. Life satisfaction typically returns to a baseline level within 12 months. Overall then, results suggest that events and conditions at work do not typically exert a major influence on life satisfaction.