Analysis of Factors Affecting the Life Satisfaction of Household Heads Living in Urban Areas: A Case of West Mediterranean Region

Analysis of Factors Affecting the Life Satisfaction of Household Heads Living in Urban Areas: A Case of West Mediterranean Region

Ali Riza , Aktas

Since the early ages of history, individuals have sought life satisfaction and considered it as a life goal. Because of this fact, the term life satisfaction has kept its importance in time and has been the focus of many studies. Life satisfaction is seen as a positive value gained by an individual’s own evaluation of the quality of life as a whole, therefore may be described as subjective. Nevertheless, studies made about life satisfaction use both subjective and objective indicators. Life satisfaction is partially conceptualized as the result of satisfaction related to various life fields such as work, family, health, etc. and it is assumed that the effects of environmental conditions highly help satisfaction related with life fields. When studies about life satisfaction are taken into consideration, it is notable that the term job satisfaction is generally emphasized. However, studies show that job satisfaction can explain only a few of the changes in life satisfaction. In this study, it is aimed to determine the socioeconomic factors affecting the life satisfaction of household heads by using data from questionnaires and Logit model. “Unclustered Single-Stage Simple Random Probability Sampling Method” was used to apply the questionnaires to 490 household heads living in city centers of Antalya, Isparta and Burdur. In order to determine the probability of whether the household heads were satisfied with their lives or not, explanatory variables oriented to the current perceptions of household heads were included to the model in the study in addition to the demographic variables. Demographic variables were included to the model as the dummy variable. Logit model was estimated by Maximum Likelihood Estimation method. According to the results of the analysis, life satisfaction of the household heads decreased with the increase of the size of the city. Similarly, increase in education level also decreased the probability of life satisfaction of the household heads. In addition, household heads with high income levels were happier than the ones with lower income. Similarly, if the spouse of the household head is either healthy, satisfied from job, or is a house wife, satisfied from marriage, then life satisfaction is determined to be higher than the household heads without the aforementioned spouse characteristics. Keywords: Satisfaction, Life Satisfaction, Household Head, Logit Model, West Mediterranean Region.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-31

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