I explores how individuals’ internal gender beliefs influence men’s and women’s subjective well-being (SWB) that they received from life-determined events like employment, marriage, and parenthood. Previous studies have extensively examined the effect of internal values and beliefs held by individuals on the different levels of SWB that are experienced by men and women. Most studies in this area measure individual values through the behaviors exhibited by the group that the individual belongs to or the dominant value of the society that the individual lives in. However, people’s behaviors do not necessarily reveal their inherent beliefs and the dominant values conveyed by the majority may fail to capture the individual differences within a social context. Therefore, previous researches may successfully capture the effect of social norms and values on the levels of SWB that individuals received from life-determined events, but fail to evaluate how each individual’s internal beliefs affect their SWB. Thus, the role of this study is to examine the influence of individuals' inherent gender beliefs on their SWB, especially for women .
Different from previous studies, this study will examine individuals’ internal gender beliefs through the historical usage of plough and the span of agriculture-based society, which has shown to be a significant predictor of an individual's inherent gender values (Hansen et al., 2015). Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, I will categorize individuals’ inherent gender beliefs according to the both usage of plough and the span of agriculture-based of their ancestor, and conduct a happiness regression analysis on SWB received by men and women with different inherent gender beliefs. For the reason that GSS collects data on contemporary American society, the social norms and social values held consistent in this study, which allows me to isolate the effect of varied individuals' values on the levels of SWB received by men and women. The results of empirical analysis will provide insight into the role of individual values on the relationship between men’s and women’s SWB and life-determined events.