Does the gender life satisfaction/depression paradox disappears when we test it in women of less traditional training in sex roles (younger, more educated, living in Scandinavian countries)? It seems not.

The Gender Life Satisfaction/Depression Paradox. Leonardo Becchetti & Gianluigi Conzo. Social Indicators Research, Sep 21 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-021-02740-5

Abstract: According to the gender life satisfaction/depression paradox women are significantly more likely to report higher levels of life satisfaction than men after controlling for all relevant socio-demographic factors, but also significantly more likely to declare they are depressed. We find that the paradox holds in the cross-country sample of the European Social Survey and is stable across age, education, self-assessed health, macroregion and survey round splits. We find support for the affect intensity rationale showing that women are relatively more affected in their satisfaction about life by the good or bad events or achievements occurring during their existence and less resilient (less likely to revert to their standard levels of happiness after a shock). We as well discuss biological, genetic, cultural, personality rationales advocated in the literature that can explain our findings.

Conclusions

The empirical literature on subjective wellbeing has identified a gender life satisfaction/depression paradox: women are more likely than men to declare the highest level of life satisfaction and, at the same time, more likely to say that they have been depressed in the recent past.

Our empirical analysis aims to shed light on the paradox. First of all, we test the two parts of the paradox jointly and for a large sample of countries in different time periods showing that the paradox is robust.

Second, we find evidence for the affect intensity rationale showing that (positive or negative) events or achievements impact relatively more on life satisfaction of women than men. Third, we more specifically observe that women are less resilient that is, they declare in a significantly higher proportion than men to take more time to absorb negative shocks, even though their lower resilience does not explain all the paradox. Fourth, we wonder whether the gender paradox disappears when we test it in subsamples of women presumably having less traditional training in sex roles (younger, more educated, living in Scandinavian countries) and find that it is not the case.

Our findings suggest that policies to address depression need to take into account these gender differences and have interesting implications on at least two dimensions. First, policymakers are interested in understanding the paradox in order to tackle depression with gender differentiated policies in order to avoid its health costs on the government budget and its productivity costs on the economy. Second, companies are interested to understand the gender differentiated mechanisms to stimulate intrinsic motivations and avoid productivity losses of their workers.

Our findings suggest that a more detailed knowledge of the mechanisms ruling the gender life satisfaction/depression paradox can be of great help in finding the right strategies to pursue gender equality goals (as from goal 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals) and to reduce health and productivity costs of depressionFootnote3. If strongest affect intensity and lower resilience are at the root of the gender paradox strategies aimed to increase women resilience to shocks (i.e. stronger support after adversity, trauma, tragedy and threats) can significantly contribute to achieve this goal. A likely major application could be allowing for gender differences in corporate soft skill training courses that are becoming more and more common. Given that resilience is a soft skill and that soft skills contribute significantly to wage skill differentials (Balcar 2014), gender calibrated soft skill training courses can contribute to bridge the gender wage gap contributing to the SDG goal of gender equality.