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How Disadvantages Shape Life Satisfaction: An Alternative Methodological Approach

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Abstract

Life satisfaction is one of the key indicators of subjective well-being. This paper aims to give a methodological contribution to the study of the factors influencing life satisfaction by emphasising the ordinal nature of this variable. Although life satisfaction is customarily treated like a numerical variable in the literature on indicators of quality of life, we consider it important to fully respect its ordinal nature. In this paper we use an ordinal classification tree-based technique to show the effect of disadvantages on life satisfaction, and we implement an original impurity measure that takes into account the ordinal nature of life satisfaction and, at the same time, the heterogeneity of its ordered categories. The technique shows that, in general, the higher the level of disadvantages, the lower the life satisfaction, and that economic factors are very important in the quality of social relationships by acting as a tipping point for the quality of life.

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Notes

  1. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Quality_of_life_indicators.

  2. For a complete review see: http://wikiprogress.org/.

  3. Health, Education and training, Work and life balance, Economic well-being, Social relationships, Security, Landscape and cultural heritage, Environment. For details on the Bes domains see: http://www.misuredelbenessere.it/index.php?id=51.

  4. Politics and institutions, Research and innovation, Quality of services.

  5. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview.

  6. http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/91926.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics, Rome, Italy

    Adolfo Morrone

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Alfonso Piscitelli

  3. Department of Economics and Statictis, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Antonio D’Ambrosio

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  1. Adolfo Morrone
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  2. Alfonso Piscitelli
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  3. Antonio D’Ambrosio
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Correspondence to Alfonso Piscitelli.

Appendix: Descriptives of Structural Variables

Appendix: Descriptives of Structural Variables

See Tables 5 and 6.

Table 5 Descriptives of structural variables of the entire sample (first column) and within terminal nodes 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 36
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Table 6 Descriptives of structural variables within terminal nodes 37, 76, 154, 155, 78, 158 and 159
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Morrone, A., Piscitelli, A. & D’Ambrosio, A. How Disadvantages Shape Life Satisfaction: An Alternative Methodological Approach. Soc Indic Res 141, 477–502 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1825-8

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