War and subjective wellbeing : an analysis of WWII and the Ukraine-Russia War.
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War dismantles the lives of civilians across the world. The psychological effects can be expansive and the influence that these events have on life satisfaction carry across time (Kijewski, 2020) and direct impact (Veronese and Pepe, 2020). The existing literature analyses the influence of war on life satisfaction, utilizing both country-level and individual-level survey data (see Coupe and Obrizan, 2023 for a summary of this literature). In this thesis, I will contribute to this literature through a replication of the works of Kijewski (2020) and Djankov et al. (2016), who investigate the influence of WWII experience on happiness. Despite these studies using a similar methodology and a shared dataset, they come to opposing conclusions. Replication of these studies allows a comparison of their findings to explore the factors influencing the different conclusions. This thesis builds on this by using a more recent survey conducted in 2022 by the European Commission to analyze the impact of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine on life satisfaction in Europe. This model adds a temporal and geographical dimension, revealing the indirect effects that the more current war has inflicted on the happiness of individuals residing outside the conflict zone. The results of these studies underscore the sensitivity of conclusions to specific methodological choices, primarily variable specification, and inclusion criteria. In general, this study challenges the notion that experience with war, whether it be 60 years ago or ongoing, has a true and significant impact on the wellbeing of European citizens.