The determinants of subjective wellbeing in a developing country: The Ecuadorian case

Ecuador is a country characterized by deep social and territorial inequalities. In order to overcome this issue the national government setup in 2008 the National Plan of Wellbeing, a master plan whose objective is to put at the centre of the political action the wellbeing of the human being. This study aims to analyze the individual and contextual determinants of subjective wellbeing in Ecuador by examining a set of variables linked to the specific social and territorial characteristics of the country and to its main policy priorities. The assessment is based on econometric techniques able to account for the nested structure of the data, namely ordinary least squares and ordered logit with clustered standard errors and multilevel ordered logit. The results are robust and show that institutional trust, income, good housing conditions and education fosters wellbeing. On the other hand, being a woman, belonging to an ethnic minority or living in an oil dependent area is negatively correlated to subjective wellbeing. The policy implications range from an improvement of the institutional framework and redistributive system to better inclusion policies.