Happiness and Regional Segmentation: Does Space Matter?

This paper examines cross-country happiness interdependencies. The sample under study includes 116 countries of diverse characteristics using averaged data for the year 2006. We divide the entire data into six groups of countries, viz., Income domain (developed and developing); Income inequality (equal and unequal); Level of political history (socialist and non-socialist). A spatial econometric technique is used to estimate the spillover effects of one country’s well-being on the well-being of the neighboring countries. Both spatial and non-spatial results indicate that corruption, health and national income serve as the best indicators of happiness for developed and equal countries, whereas unemployment affects the developing, non-socialist and unequal nations. Corruption appears to be the most significant factor, implying that a better quality government makes everybody happy. Furthermore, we find significant happiness spillovers among the above specified groups, thus indicating the importance of group clustering in the studies of happiness. The result suggests that the more homogenous the group is, the higher will be the spillover among them. We observe positive spillover for developed countries and negative spillover for socialist and equal countries. Ignoring such spatial spillover effect may lead to misunderstanding of various policy implications.     

Living Happily Ever After? The Effect of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance on the Happiness of the Elderly

The implementation of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) in 1995 has created a quasi-experiment that permits us to draw causal inference for the effect of the NHI on the happiness and life satisfaction. The NHI is expected to have a positive effect on happiness because it not only improves the health and mitigates the uncertainty in financial losses due to health shocks, but also alleviates health inequality in the population through equal access to care. The results show that the NHI has a significant effect on happiness and life satisfaction. The effect ranges from 3 to 30 % depending on the measures of happiness. Nonetheless, the effect of the NHI in narrowing happiness inequality across socioeconomic status (SES) is significant for health and income groups only while its effect on education- and gender-happiness gradients are insignificant. The increase in the probability of being happy or satisfied with life among the least healthy group is 0.08 % points higher than that of the healthier ones. Earlier studies have shown that the effects of health insurance on health and disparity in health across SES groups are small. In contrast, our findings suggest that the welfare impact of the NHI is quite large.     

Greater Happiness for a Greater Number: Some Non-controversial Options for Governments

There are dramatic differences in average happiness across nations ranging from 3.24 in Togo to 8.00 in Denmark on a 0–10-points scale. These differences are an indication that collective conditions in nations are important for happiness. Can governments play a role in the creation of such conditions? This question is addressed in an analysis of average happiness in 131 nations in 2006. The following sub-questions are considered. (1) Is there a positive correlation between average happiness in nations and the quality or the size of governments? (2) Can we explain a positive correlation in terms of causality? (3) Can we specify causality by discerning direct and indirect effects? (4) What about governments and inequality in happiness? (5) What can governments do to increase happiness intentionally? The conclusion is that the technical quality of governments is an important cause for average happiness in nations, and this causality can be specified to some extent. Good governments also reduce inequality of happiness in nations eventually. The implication is that governments can increase average happiness, and in due time reduce inequality in happiness, and that they have some non-controversial options to do so on purpose.     

Is Cohabitation As Good As Marriage for People’s Subjective Well-Being? Longitudinal Evidence on Happiness and Life Satisfaction in the British Household Panel Survey

This study investigates changes in happiness and life satisfaction associated with transitions into cohabitation and marriage in 12 waves from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) collected between 1997 and 2009. Theory suggests that happiness is an emotional state that is linked to one’s physiological reactions to life events, whereas satisfaction is a cognitive evaluation that also depends on social comparisons with other important reference groups as well as the individual’s desires, expectations and hopes. A longitudinal (fixed effects) analysis that controls for time-invariant variation in subjective well-being indicates that entering cohabitation is as beneficial for people’s happiness as entering marriage. Entering marriage is slightly more satisfying than cohabitation but only among previously never-married individuals. This is true for men and women and across age and cohorts. These findings indicate that cohabitation provides similar benefits to marriage with regard to happiness but not how previously never married individuals view their overall satisfaction with their lives.     

Happiness and Leisure Across Countries: Evidence from International Survey Data

We study the statistical link between leisure and happiness. Using survey data from 33 countries in 2007, we find that (1) certain leisure activities, leisure’s role in self-fulfillment and social interaction, and leisure’s relation to work and other spheres of life are significantly linked to individual happiness; (2) the effect of leisure quantity is not as important as other aspects of leisure; and (3) some leisure activities can be negatively associated with happiness. Consistent with findings in previous studies, family income and individual demographic variables such as age and health condition are significantly associated with happiness. National unemployment and political stability also have robustly significant effects on happiness.     

What Affects Happiness Inequality? Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the determinants of happiness inequality in Japan using unique data from the “Preference Parameters Study” of Osaka University, a nationally representative survey conducted in Japan. By estimating Recentered Influence Function regressions, we find that household income has a negative and significant effect on happiness inequality, as found for other advanced economies, though people’s perception of their relative standing in the income spectrum also matters for the dispersion of happiness. Moreover, the regression results show that the insecurity faced by people about their jobs and life after retirement is also significantly associated with the widening of happiness inequality. Such findings are cause for grave concern given that the share of irregular jobs, which tend to be low paid and insecure, in total employment significantly increased in Japan during the Lost Two Decades and that this increasing trend has not yet been reversed.     

Measuring Socio-economic Factors and Sensitivity of Happiness

There is significant variation in average subjective well-being across countries. What makes people in some countries happier or more miserable than others? In this study, we decompose the difference in average subjective well-being across countries into a comprehensive set of socio-economic factors along with cross-country difference in sensitivity of happiness in order to answer the question. While an individual’s subjective well-being is affected by socio-economic status, every individual does not necessarily draw the same level of subjective well-being from a given condition of life because of different personal characteristics. Sensitivity of happiness is an umbrella term capturing such factors that are not reflected by socio-economic conditions. We introduce Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to estimate a happiness function and specify the sensitivity score for each country in a sample. We draw on a comprehensive set of well-being indicators released by the Better Life Initiative of the OECD, along with measures of income inequality. We find that the health factor and sensitivity term play the largest role in generating variation in subjective well-being. Even within countries, the average level of subjective well-being varies between different population groups. Drawing on a set of indicators that assess the life circumstances of different groups within each country, our decomposition formulation allows for a full explanation of the differences in average life satisfaction between the groups. We investigate the differences between men and women, and high income earners and low income earners.     

The Mystery of Chinese People’s Happiness

The great improvement in economic wealth and social welfare over the decade doesn’t promote the Chinese people’s happiness. We construct a theoretical framework which covers economic wealth, social welfare, individual functional capability to explore the impact factors and determinants of the Chinese people’s happiness. Based on a national wide questionnaire survey in China, we test and modify the framework by the method of structural equation model. The empirical findings indicate that there are direct and indirect effects on the formation of happiness. For the direct effect, both the increasing of economic wealth and social welfare improves the national happiness, while the individual functional capability reduces it. For the indirect effect, the individual functional capability also reduces happiness by negatively affecting economic wealth and social welfare. The negative effect that played by individual functional capability overwhelms the positive effect played by economic wealth and social welfare. This causes the Chinese people’s happiness goes down while the economic wealth and social welfare are improving. Finally, we conclude that the Chinese people’s happiness is more about individual functional capability rather than social welfare or economic wealth.     

The Effects of Income Levels and Income Inequalities on Happiness

The standard of living reflected by one’s income and consumption is the primary explanation for the utility or satisfaction of the private consumer. However, empirical evidence very often demonstrates that the level of happiness is not necessarily higher for wealthy people in comparison to the poor. This holds within specific populations of a country, and in macro terms by comparison between the happiness of populations with low and high GDP_ppp per capita. Different research studies have used other economic and social explanatory variables for determining consumer happiness within countries. The present paper adds the new factor of income inequality that affects happiness. It is empirically proved that at extreme values of inequality measured by the Gini index, the effect of happiness is negative regardless of GDP_ppp per capita. However, at the intermediate ranges of the Gini index the effect of changes in the index on happiness is ambiguous. These results are found regardless of the actual values of GDP_ppp per capita.     

Engaged at Work and Happy at Home: A Spillover–Crossover Model

The current diary study among 50 Spanish dual-earner couples examines whether engagement at work has an impact on own and partners’ well-being. Based on the Spillover–Crossover model, we hypothesized that individuals’ work engagement would spill over to the home domain, increasing their happiness level at the end of the day. Moreover, we predicted a crossover of happiness between the members of the couple. Participants filled in a diary booklet during five consecutive working days (N = 100 participants and N = 500 occasions). The results of multilevel analyses showed that daily work engagement has a direct effect on daily happiness. We also found that employees’ daily work engagement influenced partner’s daily happiness through employees’ daily happiness. Finally, results showed a clear bidirectional crossover of daily happiness between both members of the couple. These findings indicate that the positive effects of work engagement go beyond the work setting and beyond the employee.     

Which is More Relevant for Perceived Happiness,Individual-Level or Area-Level Social Capital? A Multilevel Mediation Analysis

A growing number of studies have addressed how social capital is closely related to an individual’s perceived happiness. However, most happiness studies have focused on individual-level social capital, which is based on an individual’s subjective assessment of social capital gathered from social surveys. Considering that social capital was originally a collective concept, this study distinguished individual- and area-level aspects of social capital and their relationships in terms of their associations with perceived happiness. To this end, we employed multilevel mediation analysis using cross-sectional microdata from a nationwide Internet survey conducted in Japan (N = 9523). We focused on four types of social capital: trust in neighbors, contacts with neighbors, bonding, and bridging. Based on the estimation results, we first confirmed that social capital at both the individual and area levels had a positive association with perceived happiness when using them separately as an independent variable. Second, we found that a substantial portion of the effect of area-level social capital on perceived happiness was mediated by individual-level social capital. This suggests that an individual’s commitment to area-level social capital is required if a large portion of its potential benefits on perceived happiness are to materialize. Furthermore, we observed that the effects of area-level bonding and bridging on their individual-level measures were affected by several individual-level attributes, including personality traits. Overall, the results underscore the need for further investigation into the association between perceived happiness and social capital at different levels.     

Gender Differences in Happiness: the Effects of Marriage,Social Roles,and Social Support in East Asia

Studies in Western countries and cross-national comparisons have shown that there are several important factors contributing to the level of happiness of individuals. Utilizing the East Asian Social Survey Health Module (2010), the present study examines this relationship in four East Asian countries: China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. East Asian countries are an interesting case for this inquiry, due to the cultural contexts such as traditional gender relations. Therefore, we focus on gender differences in predictors of happiness of individuals and attempt to answer four questions: (1) Do gender differences in happiness exist in East Asian countries? (2) Does marriage still serve as the norm and thus contribute to individual’s happiness? (3) Does conforming to traditional gender roles (i.e., employment and parenthood) contribute to individual’s happiness? (4) Is the availability of social support (i.e., emotional, financial, and instrumental) positively associated with individual’s happiness? We find that there are gender differences in the determinants of happiness in East Asian countries. The result also indicates that marital status is a strong indicator of happiness in East Asian countries, especially for men but not necessarily for women. In addition, full time employment is positively associated with men’s happiness in China but negatively associated with women’s in Japan. Finally, social support is positively associated with individual’s happiness, especially for women.     

情绪和框架效应对个体捐赠决策影响的实验研究

本研究采用双因素被试间实验具体考察了特定即时情绪和框架效应对于捐赠决策的影响,结果发现存在显著的主效应和交互作用。悲伤情绪能够增加捐赠者的捐赠意愿,快乐情绪会降低捐赠者的捐赠意愿;损失框架能够增加捐赠者的捐赠意愿,幸存框架会降低捐赠者的捐赠意愿;快乐情绪的捐赠者的捐赠决策受框架效应的影响要弱于中性情绪和悲伤情绪的捐赠者,捐赠者在幸存框架下的捐赠决策受情绪的影响比在损失框架下受情绪的影响更小。     

Cross-National Pattern of Happiness: Do Higher Education and Less Urbanization Degrade Happiness?

Traditionally, happiness has been recognized as the result of a positive relationship with one's income level. However, income level may not be the only factor that affects one’s happiness. In this paper, the effects of education and urbanization factors among 67 countries were analyzed by using World Value Survey data and World Bank Indicator. Generally, the urbanization positively affects happiness in the cross-country analysis, but happiness has a negative correlation with education level. More specifically, four geographical trends have been found in this paper. First, if two variables have very low values, the nation's happiness will drop. Second, according to the moderated education ratio (10 < E < 35), East Asia (non-OECD) is found to be happier than Middle East/North Africa. Third, according to the high education ratio (E > 50), East Asia (OECD) has a lower level of happiness than other countries. Lastly, in Europe, urbanization and education are not significant factors in terms of happiness, but the economic level is the most important factor. Those results provide evidence that there are different effects of education/urbanization on happiness in terms of 1) general implication and 2) sub-divided regions (geographic or norm difference).     

Happiness is Flextime

We study how work a schedule flexibility (flextime) affects happiness. We use a US General Social Survey (GSS) pooled dataset containing the Quality of Worklife and Work Orientations modules for 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. We retain only respondents who are either full-time or part-time employees on payrolls. For flextime to be associated with greater happiness, it has to be more than just sometimes flexible or slight input into one’s work schedule, that is, little flextime does not increase happiness. But substantial flextime has a large effect on happiness–the size effect is about as large as that of household income, or about as large as a one-step increase in self-reported health, such as up from good to excellent health. Our findings provide support for both public and organizational policies that would promote greater work schedule flexibility or control for employees.     

Institutional Origins of Subjective Well-Being: Estimating the Effects of Economic Freedom on National Happiness

We exploit the cross-country differences in economic freedom to examine the link between the quality of institutions and subjective well-being. Using Veenhoven’s happiness dataset, the evidence suggests countries with better economic institutions and higher level of economic freedom, captured by the security of property rights, open markets and more limited government, are significantly more likely to experience greater subjective well-being after controlling for structural confounders of national subjective well-being such as income, unemployment, inequality, social capital and life satisfaction. The effect of institutions on cross-national happiness is both significant and robust to different model specifications, estimation techniques and possible sources of endogeneity. Furthermore, our panel data analysis reveals that over time higher levels of economic freedom are associated with decreasing subjective well-being after controlling for state dependence and income.     

Relationship social comparisons in dating and marital relationships: Adding relationship social comparison interpretations

ABSTRACT

How an individual interprets a relationship social comparison may have important implications for the self and one’s relationship. We asked whether these interpretations significantly mediated the relation between the manipulated social comparison direction and relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, satisfaction with life, and happiness for both dating (Studies 1 and 2) and married (Study 2) individuals. Participants were randomly assigned to make an upward or downward comparison to a friend’s romantic relationship and completed measures of their interpretations, relationship quality, satisfaction with life, and happiness. For both dating and married individuals, there were indirect effects of manipulated social comparison direction through the interpretations for all dependent variables. Although there were some differences in mediation for married and dating individuals, the effect sizes were not significantly different.     

The beneficial effects of prosocial spending on happiness: work hard,make money,and spend it on others?

Previous research has shown that the way people spend their money is as important to happiness as how much money people earn. Specifically, it has been shown that spending money on others contributes more to an individual’s happiness than spending money on oneself. In the present study, we investigated this effect and examined the role of the money’s origin. Students were randomly assigned either to spend a small amount of money on themselves or to spend the money on others. Moreover, half of the participants received the money as a wage, whereas the other half received the money as a windfall. The results replicated previous research indicating that prosocial spenders report greater happiness than do selfish spenders. However, the happiness effect was unaffected by the source of the money (i.e. wage vs. windfall). Implications for well-being and happiness are discussed.     

Relationships Among Social Policy Factors,National Competitiveness,and Happiness

The aim of this study is to construct a causal relationship model explaining the relationships between social policy factors and national competitiveness and national happiness; and to analyse how the former affect the latter as final dependent variables. In doing this, the study employs data for OECD member countries. Research regarding the determinants affecting national competitiveness and people’s happiness has tended to focus mainly on personal or collective characteristics such as age, gender, economic infrastructure, etc. As a result, social policy factors, including welfare budget, unemployment support budget and income inequality, have rarely been addressed in the analysis of determinants affecting national competitiveness or happiness, which is regarded as the final policy aim to be achieved by government. In particular, there has been little academic research utilizing OECD database statistics on social policy indicators. Against this background, this study uses the Structural Equation Modeling approach (SEM) to identify the direct and indirect effects of social policy factors on national competitiveness and happiness, and puts forward policy suggestions for attaining these two great goals of social policy.