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

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  • Donghwan Kim

    (Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management
    University of Houston)

Abstract

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 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).

Suggested Citation

  • Donghwan Kim, 2018. "Cross-National Pattern of Happiness: Do Higher Education and Less Urbanization Degrade Happiness?," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 13(1), pages 21-35, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:13:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11482-017-9504-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11482-017-9504-0
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    3. Mostafa E. Shahen & Shibly Shahrier & Koji Kotani, 2019. "Happiness, Generativity and Social Preferences in a Developing Country: A Possibility of Future Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-17, September.
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    7. Mohsen Joshanloo & Veljko Jovanović & Tim Taylor, 2019. "A multidimensional understanding of prosperity and well-being at country level: Data-driven explorations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-31, October.
    8. Houxi Zhou & Xuebiao Zhang & Candi Ge & Jingyi Wang & Xiaolong Sun, 2023. "Does Internet Use Boost the Sustainable Subjective Well-Being of Rural Residents? Evidence from Rural China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-16, January.

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