The Differential Impact of Family and Work on Industrial Workers’ Happiness among generational cohorts

There has been an increasing concern on the essential of balancing family and work-life as a way to promote personal happiness and quality of life. While workers’ happiness drive productivity and, then, thrive organization, it is important to know how family and work factors determine workers’ happiness to suitably design measures that improve their happiness. This paper aims to estimate the influences of work and family factors on workers’ happiness and compare their influences on happiness among generational cohorts. The study is based on a sample of 3,468 industrial workers in Thailand. The study finds the high influence of job satisfaction on happiness of all generations. However, family satisfaction was only matter to happiness among workers in Generation Y. Considering compensating differential, there were differences in the level of marginal rate of substitution of family for job between individual generational cohorts. Older workers were willing to give up more family satisfaction to obtain an additional job satisfaction. Comparing to the older generations, value of family was relatively high for Generation Y workers.