Abstract:

This research aims to provide evidence that educational attainment is not only to gain high income or obtain a fancy job but also to achieve subjective well-being, which is overall feelings of well-being. Abundant literature is available which shows educational attainment somehow give positive impact but not directly. We are using cross-sectional household data from Indonesian Family Life Survey wave 5, by means of estimating Ordered Logit Models. The estimation involves educational attainment variable that contains five categorical level of education such as not finished primary school, primary school, junior high school, senior high school, and higher/vocational education. We also include some socio-economic variables such as monthly wage, subjective health condition, marital status, employment status, gender, and age. Moreover, we distinguish the estimation between people who live in the urban and rural area. Finally, we obtain that educational attainment has a direct impact on happiness both in the urban and rural area.