Are Cocoa Farmers in Trinidad Happy? Exploring Factors Affecting their Happiness

This paper set out to determine for cocoa farmers in Trinidad and Tobago their happiness status, the factors that determine this status as well as the distribution of their happiness efficiency. A Cantril Self Anchoring Ladder scale was used to measure the Present Happiness Score and Future Happiness Score. Information for the estimations was obtained from a mail survey, in which 102 farmers in Trinidad and Tobago registered with the Cocoa and Coffee Industry Board (CCIB) responded. Two types of analyses were undertaken. For the present life satisfaction, stochastic frontier analysis was used to estimate a “happiness” frontier and the happiness efficiency of a farmer was then measured by the closeness of this farmer to this efficiency frontier. Ordinary linear regression was also used to investigate the factors affecting the future life satisfaction score (or future happiness score) for the farmers. With respect to the present life satisfaction, farmers who were happier were those whose main crop was not cocoa; older farmers, farmers with smaller household sizes, as well as farmers who were in favour of the new payment system. Household size significantly increased the variance of the inefficiency error term while the farm size negatively affected the idiosyncratic error term of the happiness function. With respect to the Future Happiness Score, farmers who favoured lower cocoa prices, females and those who were in favour of a new payment system perceived themselves to be happier in five years’ time.