Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction: Exploring Different Determinants across Groups in Society

Christian Bjørnskov, Axel Dreher and Justina A. V. Fischer

University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2005 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Abstract: This paper explores a wide range of determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 73 countries, based in turn on about 100 000 observations. The determinants can be categorized in four groups: political, economic, institutional factors and human development and culture. The relevance of these factors is estimated on country-level averages of satisfaction of sub-groups of national populations according to gender, income and political orientation, using OLS, robust regression and Extreme Bounds Analysis techniques. Our results show that only a small number of factors robustly influence life satisfaction across countries while the importance of a large number of alternative factors suggested in the previous literature is rejected.

JEL-codes: H10 H40 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2005-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society (2008)
Working Paper: Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction:Exploring Different Determinants across Groups inSociety (2006)
Working Paper: Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society (2006)
Working Paper: Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction: Exploring Different Determinants across Groups in Society (2006)
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