Conference Paper
The Effect of the “Woman Life Freedom” Protests on Life Satisfaction in Iran: Evidence from Survey Data
No.
ERF_31_PE162
Publisher
ERF
Date
March, 2025
Topic
P. Economic Systems
This study examines the causal effect of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran during the last quarter of 2022 on individual life satisfaction. To evaluate the impact, we use two original representative surveys conducted before and after the protests in Iran in 2022. The repeated cross-sectional dataset was generated with the same sampling approach in both surveys, aimed at representativeness. Our results, based on probit regressions and instrumental variable approach for a sample of 2,256 individuals, shows that the violent protest environment had a significant and negative effect on life satisfaction in Iran. To determine the exposure of the respondents to protests, this study uses different measures based on the distance of individual respondents from the protests. Overall, this protest environment decreased the probability of life satisfaction by 3.6 percentage points. These results are robust when including other determinants of individual life satisfaction. Moreover, we find significant heterogeneity among the respondents with respect to their gender, where the largest negative impact of the protests on life satisfaction is observed among women. This negative impact is larger in magnitude than that of being unemployed. Another finding is the heterogenous effect depending on media consumption which shows that consumers of international TV report the largest decrease in life satisfaction. The mechanism was also evaluated through mediation analysis which reveals feelings of security and support of surveillance as important mediators of the total effect.
Research Fellows
Mohammad Reza Farzanegan
Professor in Economics of the Middle East,...
Authors
Sven Fischer
Postdoctoral Researcher, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Center for Near...