ABSTRACT
Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................212 Background .......................................................................................................212 Data and Measures ............................................................................................ 215 Analytic Techniques .......................................................................................... 215
Dependent Variable ......................................................................................216 Predictor/Independent Variables ...................................................................217
Bivariate Analysis Results...................................................................................219 Multivariate Analysis .........................................................................................223 Happiness .........................................................................................................223 Satisfaction in Life .............................................................................................224 Findings and Discussion ....................................................................................225 Conclusion and Policy Implications ..................................................................227 References .........................................................................................................229
Introduction Over the past three decades, social scientists have dedicated a significant amount of scholarly energy to the studying of subjective well-being (SWB) (Andrews and Withey 1976; Campbell et al. 1976). The upswing in scholarly work on SWB is fuelled by a corpus of empirical work, which consistently shows that objective measures of well-being such as per capita income (PCI) do not capture the entire gamut of well-being (Bartolini et al. 2008; Diener and Seligman 2004; Helliwell 2006; Kenny 2005; Putnam 2000). The situation where positive economic growth has been associated with people’s negative sense of their well-being has triggered considerable interest in SWB in quality of life studies (see Diener et al. 1999).
