Subjective Well-Being and Heterogeneous Contexts: A Cross-National Study Using Semi-Nonparametric Frontier Methods

Jose Manuel Cordero (), Cristina Polo and Javier Salinas-Jiménez
Additional contact information
Jose Manuel Cordero: Universidad de Extremadura
Cristina Polo: Universidad de Extremadura
Javier Salinas-Jiménez: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2021, vol. 22, issue 2, No 17, 867-886

Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the literature on subjective well-being by exploring the extent to which certain economic, social and institutional variables may affect the levels of well-being declared by individuals from different countries. To do this, we adopt a novel methodological approach based on frontier techniques in order to identify whether the maximum possible levels of well-being are achieved given the available resources. Specifically, the technique used to conduct the analysis is the stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data model, which combines the advantages of parametric methods and the flexibility of the nonparametric approach. This methodology has been adapted to deal with contextual variables by reformulating the original mathematical syntax of convex nonparametric least squares. Our empirical analysis is based on longitudinal information gathered from the World Values Survey for a set of 82 countries. Our results suggest that the most efficient countries in terms of well-being include mainly developing Latin American nations together with some European countries. Moreover, we find that several social indicators, such as the quality of government, the unemployment rate or different inequality indices, have a significant effect on the estimated efficiency measures.

Keywords: Well-being; Efficiency; Cross-national; Semi-parametric approach; Contextual variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-020-00255-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:22:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10902-020-00255-3

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-020-00255-3

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 ().