IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/11275.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality in happiness: inequality in countries compared across countries

Author

Listed:
  • Veenhoven, Ruut

Abstract

Cross-national studies on happiness have focused on differences in level of happiness. The focus of this paper is on spread in happiness in the nation, also called ‘inequality in happiness’. Inequality in happiness in nations can be measured by the size of the standard deviation of responses to survey questions about the ‘overall appreciation of one’s life-as-a-whole’. This paper considers spread in happiness in 28 countries around 1980. Contrary to notions of a ‘divided’ society none of these countries shows a bi-modal distribution of happiness. All distribution are uni-modal, but the distributions are not equally flat. There are considerable differences in size of the standard deviations. These differences are not a statistical artifact of variation in level of happiness and appear quite constant through time. Inequality in happiness appears to be greater in the socio-economically most unequal countries and smaller in politically democratic and economically developed nations. Contrary to expectation, inequality in happiness appears to be more closely linked to social equality among rich nations than among not-so-rich ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Veenhoven, Ruut, 1990. "Inequality in happiness: inequality in countries compared across countries," MPRA Paper 11275, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11275/1/MPRA_paper_11275.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Inglehart, Ronald, 1971. "The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 991-1017, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ruut Veenhoven, 2005. "Inequality Of Happiness in Nations," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 351-355, December.
    2. Arletta Isaeva & Raufhon Salahodjaev, 2021. "Correlates of Life Satisfaction Inequality in Russia," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(5), pages 2251-2269, October.
    3. Teresa Maria García-Muñoz & Juliette Milgram-Baleix & Omar Odeh-Odeh, 2019. "Inequality and Life Satisfaction in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Role of Opportunity," Societies, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-25, May.
    4. Thomas Tanner & Lindsey Jones, 2015. "Measuring ‘Subjective Resilience’ – Using People’s Perceptions to Quantify Household Resilience," Working Papers id:7252, eSocialSciences.
    5. Umakrishnan Kollamparambil, 2020. "Happiness, Happiness Inequality and Income Dynamics in South Africa," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 201-222, January.
    6. Umakrishnan Kollamparambil, 2021. "Socio-Economic Inequality of Wellbeing: A Comparison of Switzerland and South Africa," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 555-574, February.
    7. Wim Kalmijn & Ruut Veenhoven, 2005. "Measuring Inequality of Happiness in Nations: In Search for Proper Statistics," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 357-396, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ali, Maged & Azab, Nahed & Sorour, M. Karim & Dora, Manoj, 2019. "Integration v. polarisation among social media users: Perspectives through social capital theory on the recent Egyptian political landscape," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 461-473.
    2. David Held & Robert Schütze & Charles S. Maier, 2017. "Democratic Dangers Beyond Borders," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8(s6), pages 78-86, October.
    3. Alan Arwine & Lawrence Mayer, 2014. "Tolerance and the Politics of Identity in the European Union," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(3), pages 669-681, September.
    4. McNeil, Andrew & Luca, Davide & Lee, Neil, 2023. "The long shadow of local decline: Birthplace economic adversity and long-term individual outcomes in the UK," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    5. Ewa Kopczyńska, 2020. "Are There Local Versions of Sustainability? Food Networks in the Semi-Periphery," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-15, April.
    6. Tridico, Pasquale, 2013. "The stage of development among former communist economies: Social capital, the middle class and democracy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 47-58.
    7. Bernd Hayo & Edith Neuenkirch, 2018. "Survey on Germans’ Attitudes Towards and Knowledge of Monetary Policy Issues: Documentation of Survey Methodology and Descriptive Results," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201821, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    8. Arnstein Aassve & Letizia Mencarini & Elena Pirani & Daniele Vignoli, 2023. "The last bastion is falling: Survey evidence of the new demographic reality in Italy," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2023_04, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    9. Michael Weinhardt & Jürgen Schupp, 2011. "Multi-Itemskalen im SOEP Jugendfragebogen," Data Documentation 60, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Meral Ugur-Cinar & Kursat Cinar & Tekin Kose, 2020. "How Does Education Affect Political Trust?: An Analysis of Moderating Factors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 779-808, November.
    11. Eberhard Feess & Helge Mueller & Sabrina G. Ruhnau, 2014. "The Impact of Religion and the Degree of Religiosity on Work Ethic: A Multilevel Analysis," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(4), pages 506-534, November.
    12. Malte Petersen & Monika Keller & Jürgen Weibler & Wasilios Hariskos, 2019. "Business education: Does a focus on prosocial values increase students’ pro-social behavior?," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 18(2), pages 181-190, December.
    13. Grant Mills & Simon Austin & Derek Thomson & Hannah Devine-Wright, 2009. "Applying a Universal Content and Structure of Values in Construction Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 90(4), pages 473-501, December.
    14. Bruce Tranter, 2015. "The Impact of Political Context on the Measurement of Postmaterial Values," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(2), pages 21582440155, June.
    15. Kiyotaka Nemoto & Hiroki Oka & Hiroki Fukuda & Yoshinori Yamakawa, 2017. "MRI-based Brain Healthcare Quotients: A bridge between neural and behavioral analyses for keeping the brain healthy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-13, October.
    16. Martinez-Alier, J., 1995. "The environment as a luxury good or "too poor to be green"?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, April.
    17. Ian R Gordon, 2018. "In what sense left behind by globalisation? Looking for a less reductionist geography of the populist surge in Europe," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 11(1), pages 95-113.
    18. Nicolae-Bogdan IANC & Thierry BAUDASSE, 2021. "How can culture affect taxation? A postmaterialism value approach," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2848, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    19. Maria Cotofan & Robert Dur & Stephan Meier, 2021. "Does growing up in a recession increase compassion? The case of attitudes towards immigration," CEP Discussion Papers dp1757, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. Megan V. Teague & Virgil Henry Storr & Rosemarie Fike, 2020. "Economic freedom and materialism: an empirical analysis," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 1-44, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    happiness; inequality; cross-national;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.