Happiness in Japan in Times of Upheaval: Empirical Evidence from the National Survey on Lifestyle Preferences

Tim Tiefenbach () and Florian Kohlbacher

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2015, vol. 16, issue 2, 333-366

Abstract: Happiness economics has become an established field of research, and happiness and life satisfaction are increasingly considered important policy goals by governments around the globe. The Japanese government has recently started to follow this trend by regularly collecting data on personal happiness and its determinants through nationwide surveys since 2010. Analyzing data from the 2011 National Survey on Lifestyle Preferences, this paper has three aims: first, we use the Japanese happiness data to check for similarities and differences compared to well-known findings established in the international literature. Second, from a Japanese perspective we contribute to ongoing debates regarding inconclusive findings. Third, we analyze the happiness effects of the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11. Overall, our results confirm the majority of determinants established by previous studies in the field of happiness economics, such as income, unemployment and marriage. But we find significant differences regarding the effects of entrepreneurship and political participation. Finally, we do not find a statistically significant nation-wide drop in happiness after the disaster of 11 March 2011, but we observe a spatial effect indicating that respondents living closer to the Fukushima prefecture are less happy after the disaster. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Happiness economics; Japan; Disaster; March 11; 3–11; Great East Japan Earthquake; Life satisfaction; Fukushima (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10902-014-9512-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:16:y:2015:i:2:p:333-366

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-014-9512-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().