Does Education Make People Happy? Spotlighting the Overlooked Societal Condition

Abstract

The association between education and subjective well-being has long been investigated by social scientists. However, prior studies have paid inadequate attention to the influence of societal-level educational expansion and skills diffusion. In this article, multilevel regression analyses, using internationally comparable data for over 48,000 individuals in 24 countries, detect the overall positive linkage between educational attainment and life satisfaction. Nevertheless, this relationship is undermined due to the larger degree of skills diffusion at the societal level, and no longer confirmed once labor market outcomes are accounted for. Meanwhile, the extent of skills diffusion per se is positively and substantially associated with people’s subjective well-being even after adjusting for key individual-level and country-level predictors, whereas other societal conditions including GDP, Gini coefficients, safety, civic engagement, and educational expansion do not indicate significant links with life satisfaction in the current analysis. Given that recent research suggests skills diffusion promotes the formation of meritocratic social systems, one may argue it is the process of fairer rewards allocation underpinned by skills diffusion, rather than the status quo of macroeconomy, economic inequality, social stability, and educational opportunities as such, that matters more to people’s subjective well-being.

The effect of social capital on individual happiness in Indonesia

“…All, except age, have a positive relationship with happiness. Individuals with higher education are likely to have happier lives (Araki, 2022;Cuñado & de Gracia, 2012;Nikolaev & Rusakov, 2016). This is because people with higher education are exposed to better information and knowledge than those with lower education.…”

The Resilience Divide Among Older Adults Under Uncertainty: A Positive Sociological Study of Life Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Crisis

“…Although Japan can be considered as one ideal case for gerontological studies as discussed earlier, the generalizability of its implications to other countries should be carefully examined in consideration of sociocultural commonalities and differences that may affect life satisfaction of older adults and beyond. This includes, but is not limited to, social policy/security (i.e., the extent to which older adults are socio-economically supported), the degree of gender (in)equality (i.e., how older women and men are (un)equally treated in a society), the extent of social connectedness ( Cornwell et al, 2008 ), the rewards allocation mechanisms linked to the aggregate skills level ( Araki, 2022 ), and their interactions with individual-level attributes (i.e., compositional effects). In so doing, variables should also be extended to, for example, other types of SWB (e.g., hedonic and eudemonic happiness; negative dimensions of mental health), genetic factors, time use, objective measures for health and relationships, and attitude toward vaccination ( Bhagianadh & Arora, 2022 ; Callow & Callow, 2021 ).…”

Influence of college education on happiness: A quasi-experimental study based on higher education expansion in China

“…Most researchers believe that college education is positively associated with happiness, and individuals received college education usually have a higher level of happiness than those who did not ( Liu et al, 2012 ; Hu, 2015 ; Hu and Gao, 2019 ; FitzRoy and Nolan, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2022 ). However, with the expansion of higher education and increase of skills diffusion, the marginal happiness effect of college education may gradually decrease ( Araki, 2022 ). The positive impact of college education on happiness is mainly due to its contribution to the improvement of people’s material living conditions, especially the increase of wage earnings ( Hu and Gao, 2019 ; FitzRoy and Nolan, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2022 ).…”