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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on December 15, 2008
European Sociological Review 2009 25(5):535-549; doi:10.1093/esr/jcn070
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

What are the Reasons for Differences in Job Satisfaction across Europe? Individual, Compositional, and Institutional Explanations

Florian Pichler and Claire Wallace

Claire Wallace, Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen, Dunbar Street, Aberdeen AB24 3QY, UK. Email: claire.wallace{at}abdn.ac.uk

Correspondence: Florian Pichler (to whom all correspondence should be addressed), Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK. Email: F.Pichler{at}surrey.ac.uk

This article looks at the determinants of job satisfaction in 27 European countries at both the individual and country level. Individual determinants include type of occupation, supervision responsibilities, working hours, and the assessment of various dimensions, such as intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics. These factors already explain a large share of country-level variation which renders country differences in job satisfaction foremost the result of individual factors and the composition of the workforce. Notwithstanding this finding, some countries still have higher job satisfaction (country premium) whilst others have less job satisfaction (country penalty) once individual-level explanations are taken into account. To explain this, we considered the effects of country-level institutional factors, such as wage levels, extent of unionization, levels of unemployment and inequality, of which wage levels were the most important.

Manuscript received: July 1, 2008.


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