The Origins of Happiness

(Elliott) #1
Notes to Pages 171–176

fixity in the correlation of genes and environment that it is the
specific aim of policy to unfix.


  1. See Figure 1.5 (b).

  2. Two exceptions are that premature children are recorded as (cet.
    par.) happier at 11 and firstborn children as less happy at 5.

  3. See online Full Table 10.1, p. 4.

  4. Presumably the mother matters more since she interacts more.
    However the mother’s mental health is measured eight times up to
    when the child is 11, while the father’s is measured only three times
    until the child is 2. To see if this matters, we also focused on explain-
    ing the child’s emotional health at 5, using three observations on both
    parents’ mental health. The difference between the effect of mother
    and father remained as large as it is in Table 12.1. The same occurred if
    we focused on explaining the child’s emotional health at 16, but using
    only the first three observations on each parent’s mental health.
    The mother’s mental health was measured using the Edinburgh
    Post- natal Depression Scale (EDPS), and the father’s was tested using
    the Crown- Crisp Experiential Index.

  5. Johnston, Schurer, and Shields (2013) show this in the BCS.
    Powdthavee and Vignoles (2008) use BHPS data to show how parent’s
    emotional distress in year t produces a fall in the life- satisfaction of
    their children aged 11– 15 between years t and t + 1.

  6. O’Connor et al. (2002). See also Talge, Neal, and Glover (2007)
    for a review on this issue. On the temporal effects of parents’ mood on
    the mood of children, see Larson and Gillman (1999) and Downey,
    Purdie, and Schaffer- Neitz (1999).

  7. Aunola, Stattin, and Nurmi (2000); Dornbusch et al. (1987);
    Lamborn et al. (1991); Steinberg et al. (1992).

  8. The weights come from a principal component analysis.

  9. There are no data on fathers’ behavior to the child, nor fathers’
    involvement.

  10. For results using the Millennium Cohort see Kiernan and
    Huerta (2008). Age: three years old.

  11. Heckman and Carneiro (2003) and Cunha and Heckman
    (2007).

  12. The table is for intellectual performance only, since for emo-
    tional health and behavior the gross correlations are hardly any bigger
    than the partial correlations shown in Tables 12.1 and 12.2.

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