Well-being inequality across the globe: Where lives are most unequal, and why

One of the key problems of comparative inequality research has been the lack of a good indicator for the overall extent of inequalities in a society. Typically, in cross-national research inequality levels are compared via measures of income distribution. Taking advantage of recent research from QOL researchers, this paper uses subjective well-being measures in order to express a nation’s overall degree of inequality in terms of happiness inequality, i.e. the inequality in people’s satisfaction with life-as-a-whole, and in feeling happy. Pooling data from all available waves of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study from 1981-2008, we compute happiness inequality for 280 units (country-years), using the percent maximum standard deviation approach.

The paper has three main goals: First, to present evidence on happiness inequality in a broad international comparison. We demonstrate in which countries and world regions lives are most equal, and in which they are most unequal. Secondly, we analyse why happiness inequality is larger in some places than others, looking at a range of country characteristics. More specifically, we investigate the impact of three groups of factors, namely objective inequalities, material living conditions, and political institutions. Third, by analysing “feeling happy” and “life satisfaction” separately, we can find out whether these two facets of subjective well-being inequality are driven by the same or by different country characteristics.