Happiness in Countries: Does Greater Wealth Equal Happiness
Within this argument lies two theories. On one hand some people believe that in many cases YES a wealthier country will experience higher happiness, but on the other hand there are many economists who think that there is NO relationship
Evidence for a Connection
So does a higher GDP have permanent effects on a nation’s happiness? GDP does help buy extra happiness. But other factors have been forming throughout the years that have gradually offset the benefits of extra real income. To make this correlation easier to find we used the ‘GDP in a happiness Regressions’ equation, provided in the essay, The Macroeconomics of Happiness.” The equation is as follows:
- HAPPYjit: well-being level reported by an individual ‘j’ in country ‘i’ in the year ‘t’
- GDPit: Gross Domestic Product per capita in that country
- PERSONALjit: Personal characteristics of respondents (income, marital status, education, employed/unemployed, age
Below is a Comparison of the USA's GDP and it's fluxuations compared to average happiness survey fluxuations that occured during the same time frame. As you can see, if you visually compare the data there are similar peaks and valley's in both. Each corresponding to one another quite drastically
