Life satisfaction in a survey of Italian households

This paper explores life satisfaction in Italy by using the ISAE survey on Italian households’ budget, which has been extended to the specific question on this aspect in the May 2008 wave. Our main new contributions to the existing literature regard the role of the characterisation of the family structure, the type of work, the place of living, the working time in relation to life satisfaction, but above all, the stressing role of perceived income, of past income changes, affordability of expenses for monthly bills, and borrowing. Actual income clearly emerges as an insufficient indicator of the households’ economic conditions which are relevant for their self-reported life satisfaction.perceived happiness, well being, households