Chapter 2. Early Skills and Adult Life Satisfaction separately in the regression. The table suggests that, of these variables, energy/fatigue is most strongly related to life satisfaction. This is followed by social functioning, i.e. how individuals engage in social activities (e.g., visiting friends). When including all daily functioning variables together in the regression, pain does not significantly mediate the relationship anymore, whereas the other functioning measures do.7 2.4.3 The relationship between early skills and distinct adult life domains We now examine how early skills relate to adult satisfaction in multiple life domains: 1) self-perceived general health, 2) financial management, 3) happiness in relationships, 4) job satisfaction, and 5) emotional satisfaction.8 We apply the Bonferroni correction to account for multiple hypothesis testing. The estimates of the relationships between early skills and domain-specific satisfaction are shown in Figure 2.1, with the first panel illustrating estimates for reading and the second panel those for math. First, we find that early reading and math skills positively relate to adult self-perceived general health. A one standard deviation increase 7This is consistent with a study by Wahl et al. (2009), who find that fatigue mediates the relationship between chronic pain and general life satisfaction. 8In Table A.5 of the appendix, we assess how well our selected domain satisfactions reflect the general life satisfaction measure by examining the adjusted Rsquared of regressions of life satisfaction on domain-specific satisfaction. We analyze each domain separately and then all domains together. The appendix shows that domain-specific satisfaction increasingly contributes to overall life satisfaction over the years, with the five domains explaining 16.3% of its variation at age 29, rising to 33.3% by age 46. This trend holds for all domains except job satisfaction. Malaise explains most variation in overall life satisfaction at all ages. 30
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