Resumen de Three essays on economics of happiness
This thesis studies determinants of children’s subjective well-being (SWB) and effect of education policies on SWB. The thesis is composed of three chapters which investigate impact of school violence, private tutoring (PT) and student rights reforms on SWB of students.
The first chapter investigated the effect of school violence, in terms of direct and indirect victimization among peers, on elementary students' SWB. I analyze. Using fixed effects (FE) and instrumental variables (IV) estimation on individual-level longitudinal data of elementary 4th grade students, I identify direct causal impact of school violence on indicators of SWB. I also exploit Korea’s school equalization policy to identify causal relationship between indirect school violence and SWB. Results suggest that victim status has detrimental effect on life satisfaction with life, emotional SWB, aggression, and peer satisfaction. Indirect violence has negative effect on life satisfaction, suicidal ideation, aggression, peer satisfaction and interpersonal trust for SWB after 5 years. The results suggest the need for more investment on preventing relational violence; timely and effective protective measures to protect victims; enabling bystanders to counteract violence ; programs to improve quality of interpersonal relationship; and, more data on peer relationship and adult SWB outcomes.
Second chapter focuses on private tutoring (PT) which causes considerable financial and psychological burden on students. FE estimation is used to control for potential endogeneity of PT. I also estimate consumption of PT of peer and difference between peer’s and own PT on WB. Results suggest that PT has negative effect on individual's emotional WB. Increase of PT among peers has negative effect on satisfaction with school. Results also suggest that increasing PT does not lead to rise in ranking of exam scores among school mates but it is positively associated with difference between individual's consumption of PT and peer’s consumption of PT. Such difference in PT also has negative and significant impact on emotional WB. Results suggest that policies should consider additional benefits of reducing burden of PT, as well as the need for more fundamental reform in education system that changes payoffs from academic competition, better data that capture peer effect aspect of PT in more depth and link adult outcomes.
Third chapter investigates the impact of reforms which prohibit corporal punishment in schools that were enacted in some parts of regions in Korea from 2009-2016. Using difference-in-differences estimation method with school-level administrative data and individual level longitudinal data, I estimate effect of banning corporal punishment on students' outcomes such as academic performance, mental health, school violence, SWB with regard to school, peer and teachers, and time usage. The effect of the reforms are found to have stronger effect on younger cohorts. I also find that positive effect takes several years to take effect. Reforms have smaller positive effect on girls, and has positive but smaller effect on private schools than public schools. The results suggest that time lag should be taken into consideration when we evaluate these reforms. Information such as school level compliance to reforms, SWB measured in adulthood, or regionally comparable data on student from vulnerable groups will contribute to more accurate estimation of the effect of reforms.
