Life Satisfaction and Preferences over Economic Growth and Institutional Quality

This paper demonstrates that institutional factors have differential impacts on subjective well-being of individuals in rich versus poor countries. A lower level of corruption, a more democratic government and better civil rights increase the well-being of individuals in rich countries, whereas an i...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of labor research 2017-03, Vol.38 (1), p.100-121
Main Authors: Altindag, Duha T., Xu, Junyue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil rights
Correlation analysis
Corruption
Democracy
Developing countries
Economic conditions
Economic development
Economic growth
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Happiness
High income
Hypotheses
LDCs
Life satisfaction
Life sciences
Low income groups
Per capita
Quality
Social Sciences
Social welfare
Studies
Variables
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper demonstrates that institutional factors have differential impacts on subjective well-being of individuals in rich versus poor countries. A lower level of corruption, a more democratic government and better civil rights increase the well-being of individuals in rich countries, whereas an increase in per capita income has no impact. On the contrary, in poor countries the extent of corruption, democracy or civil rights has no influence on happiness, but an increase in per capita income impacts happiness positively. We provide evidence that this stark contrast may be due to the difference of preferences over economic growth and institutional factors.
ISSN:0195-3613
1936-4768
DOI:10.1007/s12122-016-9235-2