City Research Online

Abstract

We use the 2015-2016 waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) to look at subjective wellbeing around the time of the June 2016 EU membership Referendum in the UK (Brexit). We employ measures of both evaluative and affective wellbeing, namely life satisfaction and mental distress respectively. We find that those reporting lower life satisfaction in 2015 were more likely to express a preference for leaving the EU in 2016, while mental distress was less predictive of pro-Brexit attitudes. PostReferendum, those with Leave preferences enjoyed an increase in life satisfaction but there was no change in average life satisfaction in the overall sample. In contrast, the average level of mental distress increased in the sample post-Brexit with no significant difference between those preferring to remain in or to leave the EU. We test the robustness of our results by considering a number of potential caveats, such as sample selection, unobserved individual fixed effects or the interval between interviews. Overall, our results suggest that levels of subjective wellbeing may both be a cause and a result of the 2016 Brexit vote.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Powdthavee, N., Plagnol, A. , Frijters, P. and Clark, A. E. (2018). Who got the Brexit blues? The effect of Brexit on subjective wellbeing in the UK. Economica, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12304. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
Publisher Keywords:	life satisfaction, mental distress, Brexit, United Kingdom, democracy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) J Political Science > JX International law J Political Science > JZ International relations
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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