This study investigates the impact of the 2008–2009 subprime crisis on long-term financial satisfaction, addressing the gap in literature on early-career financial shocks and their connection to future financial attitudes. Using data from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey covering the period from 2017 to 2021, we employ a cohort difference-in-differences method to examine how financial shocks experienced during early career years influence long-term financial satisfaction. Our analysis reveals that individuals exposed to the crisis during their early career report higher levels of financial satisfaction over time, highlighting factors such as age, culture, religion, and work attitudes as influential mechanisms. These findings offer new insights into psychological factors as additional drivers of utility beyond consumption and provide implications for incorporating early-life experiences into the basis of welfare analysis in policy-making.

In this study, we use data from Chinese General Social Survey to investigate the impact of religion on fertility preference in the biggest transitional country. Our Results reveal a positive impact of religious faith on fertility preference after controlling individual, family, and social factors. We show the effects of religion on fertility as follow: (i) robust when considering Chinese cultural background, applying other continuous and discrete regression strategies, and dealing with endogeneity problem; (ii) more significant among Christians and Muslims; (iii) stronger for females in the high-income group; (iv) mainly driven by influences from the institutionalization of religious faith and the frequency of participation in religious activities. Our findings suggest that religion effects on fertility preference still exist in a non-religion-dominated country such as China.