Keywords: Demography, divorce, well-being, rational choice
 

"Essays on Well-being, Major Live Events, and Economics"

The overall goal of the thesis is to advance our understanding of human well-being, major life events, and their link to economics. For this purpose, Chapters 2 & 3 analyse human well-being around the life events of romantic separation and internal migration. They link this analysis to economics by applying and testing economic theory from the rational agent perspective. This means they assume that people make rational decisions concerning romantic separations and migration. Moreover, the chapters' link to economics is also present through the inclusion of a range of economic outcomes. Chapter 4 analyses the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and mortality in France. Eventually, a better understanding of the above aspects may have a positive impact on individuals coping with these life events, on policymakers trying to influence them, and on society's attitudes towards them.

As an alternative, I would summarise just the main chapter of my dissertation on divorce: One spouse alone predominantly initiates divorces. This might suggest that one spouse typically benefits from divorce (the initiator), while the other is disadvantaged (the non-initiator). At the same time, empirical research on the consequences of divorce commonly focuses on the average effect for both partners. In contrast, I analyse separation trajectories individually for initiators and non-initiators of formerly cohabitating or married couples. The results reveal substantial differences in separation trajectories between initiators and non-initiators. Initiators improve their subjective well-being after separation and see gains in other life domains, except the economic domain. Non-initiators experience significant short-term losses in subjective well-being, from which they recover in the end. Non-initiators’ trajectories in other life domains vary.

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