Z10 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology: GeneralReturn

The first aim of the study is to compare the intensity of participation in cultural activities among natives, first- and second-generation immigrants in Czech Republic. The second aim is to examine whether the participation in those activities improves the emotional and psychological well-being of first-generation immigrants compared to the natives. The empirical analysis relies on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe in 2017. We perform a system of simultaneous ordered probit models. To further improve our estimates, we apply an instrumental variables (IV) approach to reduce the endogeneity issue. The results show that natives report higher levels of psychological well-being, but there is no difference in cultural participation between the second-generation immigrants and natives. First-generation immigrants participate less frequent-ly, except attending a sports match, where we find no difference in the frequency. However, in the majority of the cases, we conclude that immigrants participating in those activities are more likely to improve their well-being. Furthermore, there is no difference in cultural participation between immigrants and natives in areas characterized by high net migration rates. On the other hand, a lower frequency of participation is found in the areas with low net migration rates, indicating that migration and diversity in an area may encourage participation in the cultural activities explored in this study. Finally, the length of residence and mixed marriages are related with a higher frequency of cultural participation. The findings suggest that fostering accessibility of cultural activities and migration policies should be regarded.

The article deals with life and job satisfaction of the Czech working-age population. First it highlights concepts of happiness and satisfaction within the emerging multidimensional approaches to individual and societal well-being. Then, it resumes the data sources of those measures, with specific attention to the Module on Subjective Well-being of the survey EU-SILC. Using this data, basic characteristics and determinants of life satisfaction are shown first and basic characteristics and determinants of job satisfaction after that. Finally the relationship between these two dimensions of satisfaction is analysed. It appears that determination of life satisfaction by socio-demographic and economic characteristics of individuals and households is much higher than the determination of job satisfaction. The identity of "contradictory" categories where life satisfaction significantly outweighs job satisfaction and vice versa is weak.

The article documents the development of life satisfaction in four transitional Central European countries since 1991, in comparison with Germany and Austria. After presentation of data sources and the overview of the literature regarding the effect of transition on life satisfaction, surveys of European Values Study 1991, 1999 and 2008 are analysed together with macroeconomic data. First, satisfaction levels are correlated with GDP and then, individual characteristics of income, gender, education and family status are regressed to as explanatory variables of life satisfaction. While the explanatory power of GDP is found as very weak for the entire period, the effect of objective characteristics has peaked in 1999 and the effect of subjective perceptions in 2008. The survey information on trends after 2008 differs but no dramatic change of the life satisfaction due to the economic recession has so far appeared.

There is a growing effort to find alternative measures of the overall performance of economy and social development. More complex indicators are constructed, multi-dimensional approaches are searched and concepts of subjective well-being are increasingly applied. While academic research is booming and politicians are interested about innovative approach in the West, not much attention is given to the topic in the Czech Republic. The article drafts some of many problems appearing on the interface of the objective and subjective indicators. In the first section, some multi-dimensional approaches are tackled and in the second, concepts of happiness and satisfaction are overviewed. The relationship between economic growth and human happiness is described next. In the fourth section, survey data on reported happiness in the Czech Republic, ready for analysis and comparison, are described. In the conclusion, perspectives of research in the area are outlined, together with a possible use of subjective indictors in policies.