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Culture and Happiness

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  • Dezhu Ye
  • Yew-Kwang Ng
  • Yujun Lian

Abstract

Culture is an important factor affecting happiness. This paper examines the predictive power of cultural factors on the cross-country differences in happiness and explores how different dimensions of cultural indices differ in their effects on happiness. Our empirical results show that the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness nine culture indices are all significantly related with happiness. Out of these nine indices, power distance (PDI) and gender egalitarianism (GEI) play the most important and stable role in determining subjective well-being (SWB). We further examine the relative importance of the various variables in contributing to the R-squared of the regression. The results show that PDI is the most important, accounting for 50 % of the contributions to R-squared of all variables, or equalling the combined contributions of income, population density and four other traditional variables. The contribution of GEI is 37.1 %, also well surpassing other variables. Our results remain robust even taking account of the different data for culture and SWB. Copyright The Author(s) 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Dezhu Ye & Yew-Kwang Ng & Yujun Lian, 2015. "Culture and Happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 123(2), pages 519-547, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:123:y:2015:i:2:p:519-547
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-014-0747-y
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    8. Hock-Eam Lim & Daigee Shaw & Pei-Shan Liao & Hongbo Duan, 2020. "The Effects of Income on Happiness in East and South Asia: Societal Values Matter?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 391-415, February.
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    15. Gómez-Antonio, Miguel & del Moral Arce, Ignacio & Hortas-Rico, Miriam, 2022. "Are VAT reforms an effective tool for promoting culture? A quasi-experiment in Spain," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1016-1040.
    16. Gabriela Mihaela Muresan & Cristina Ciumas & Monica Violeta Achim, 2020. "Can Money Buy Happiness? Evidence for European Countries," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 953-970, September.
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    20. Schlaile, Michael P. & Bogner, Kristina & Muelder, Laura, 2021. "It’s more than complicated! Using organizational memetics to capture the complexity of organizational culture," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 801-812.
    21. Клименко Л. В. & Скачкова Л. С., 2020. "Субъективное Благополучие Преподавателей Российских Вузовопыт Эмпирического Исследования," Вопросы образования // Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 4, pages 37-63.
    22. Gabriel Leite Mota, 2022. "Unsatisfying ordinalism: The breach through which happiness (re)entered economics," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 513-528, June.
    23. KangJae Jerry Lee & Seonghee Cho & Eui Kyung Kim & Sunhwan Hwang, 2020. "Do More Leisure Time and Leisure Repertoire Make Us Happier? An Investigation of the Curvilinear Relationships," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(5), pages 1727-1747, June.
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