Distributional Effects of Freedom and Income on Life Satisfaction: Evidence from East Asian Chinese Societies

Abstract

We estimate the distributional effects of freedom and income on life satisfaction (LS) for East Asian Chinese societies through an ordinal parametric quantile regression approach. The results show that freedom and income exhibit positive and mostly significant effects across societies and LS levels. The freedom effects generally become larger for those at higher LS quantiles. However, the income effects decline as the LS quantile level increases. Thus, one may have a trade‐off between freedom and income without compromising individual LS. The trade‐off of freedom (income) for income (freedom) is more pronounced for people at a lower (higher) LS level.