Living to tell the tale: Europeans’ subjective well-being over autocratic and democratic times

How do individuals assess their past happiness in European countries that experienced dictatorships? Do these patterns differ from those observed in established Western democracies? This paper provides novel evidence on these questions using life-history data from older Europeans in fourteen countries that experienced prolonged authoritarian rule in Southern and Central-Eastern Europe. Relying on individuals’ recalled happiest period in life, we track the probability of experiencing peak happiness over the years 1945–2017. First, we estimate time trends in this probability across autocratic and democratic periods. Second, we adopt an event-study approach to compare these trends with those observed among individuals in long-standing Western European democracies. Our findings reveal that, excluding the first postwar decade, people are at least as likely—and often more likely—to recall years under autocratic rule, rather than democratic ones, as part of their happiest life period, especially in ex-communist countries. Earlier democratic transitions in the Iberian countries appear more gradual and less disruptive in terms of personal happiness than the collapse of communism. We also document that the timing of the happiest period in life differ markedly for residents in Western Europe and their counterparts living in countries with an autocratic past. Consistent with previous research, we document widening happiness gaps in Central and Eastern Europe relative to Western European countries from the early 1990s onward, despite substantial economic and political convergence.