Happiness in Japan: From the Viewpoint of Age, Sex and Relative Wealthiness

This presentation is based on the results of two studies: Exploring Social Capital in East Asia: Community, Social Trust and Safety-net (2009-2013; study headed by Hiroo Harada) by the Center for Social Capital Studies, and its successor Forming a Social Well-being Research Consortium in Asia (2014-2018; study headed by Hiroo Harada) by the Center for Social Well-being Studies; both research projects are within Senshu University in Japan.

I mainly focues on a Web Survey on Lifestyle and Values for about 11,000 respondents in Japan conducted on February 2015. First of all I would like to explain several important and interesting findings of the survey.

First, the correlation between subjective happiness and life satisfaction from all samples of the survey results is rather high: the correlation factor is 0.836. Second, as predicted, the wealthier the household/personal income of the respondents, the higher their life satisfaction. Third, the life satisfaction’s curve of the poorest is U-shaped according to age; that is, the life satisfaction of 30’s /40’s year old are rather low. To the contrary the life satisfaction of the wealthiest has become higher according to age: the value of 20’s year old is the lowest and 60’s the highest. Forth, the female’s life satisfaction is almost higher at the same household/personal income level over all age than man.

These outcomes may be concluded from the compound elements of the social and economic position of the people. On the Forum I would like to declare the relation of these factors.