The Good Life, Affluence, and Self-reported Happiness: Introducing the Good Life Index and Debunking Two Popular Myths

Delhey, Jan; Steckermeier, Leonie C.

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.07.007

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Singh-Manoux et al 2005;Präg et al 2016). People who feel inferior are also less happy with their lives (Delhey and Dragolov, 2014;Delhey and Steckermeier 2016), which not only proves true social philosophers (e.g. Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2013), but also Ridgeway's (2014) claim that people do care about their status.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Better for Everyone? Egalitarian Culture and Social Wellbeing in Europe

Steckermeier

Delhey

2018

Soc Indic Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The goal of this study is to explore the relationship between culture and social well-being, focusing on inferiority feelings. While being respected is widely seen as a key ingredient of a good life, inferiority feelings signal a lack of esteem from others. Previous research has mainly looked at income inequality as the key contextual condition for inferiority feelings and other status concerns, often inspired by the income inequality thesis/Spirit Level paradigm (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). We contribute to this discussion by extending this paradigm into the cultural realm. Our main assumption is that an inegalitarian culture breeds inferiority feelings, whereas an egalitarian culture dampens them and in this sense is "better". Within a multi-level framework we combine information on culture, operationalized as collective values and beliefs, retrieved from the European Value Study for 30 European countries, and survey data on inferiority feelings for over 37,000 individuals from the most recent European Quality of Life Survey (2011-12). Our evidence suggests that widespread self-expression values and social trust (as expressions of an egalitarian culture) are indeed better as they dampen individuals' inferiority feelings while widespread individual blame for poverty (an expression of an inegalitarian culture) heightens them. In further analyses of each income quintile separately, we find evidence that culture mattersfor good or worse-for all income groups, except the poorest quintiles. Our results should prompt scholars of social status and social well-being to pay more attention to the impact of culture.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Better for Everyone? Egalitarian Culture and Social Wellbeing in Europe

Steckermeier

Delhey

2018

Soc Indic Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The prominent work of Erik Allardt (1993) distinguishes between the needs of having, loving, and being. The more fine-grained Good Life approach considers seven basic goods, among which respect and friendship are included (Delhey and Steckermeier 2016;Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2013). Since cohesive societies can be considered more "warm-hearted" and solidary, arguably they cater better for social needs, such as loving (in the Allardt scheme), respect and friendship (in the Good Life approach).…”

Section: Cultural Conditions: Religiosity and Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Cohesion and Its Correlates: A Comparison of Western and Asian Societies

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Trust can either be conceived of as a social glue in its own right, or as a constitutive element of a larger societal syndrome, termed social cohesion. This contribution takes the latter perspective, analyzing social trust and trust in institutions as integral parts of social cohesion more generally. Despite ongoing worries about the state of social cohesion in contemporary societies, surprisingly little is known as to which macro-level conditions actually weaken social cohesion, and which foster it. It remains an open question whether social cohesion is shaped by universal social forces that work similarly in various world regions, or by region-specific ones (the same holds true for outcomes of social cohesion). Against this background, the present paper seeks to advance our understanding of correlates of social cohesion by systematically comparing Western and Asian societies. The empirical analysis is based on the most comprehensive index of social cohesion currently available, the Bertelsmann Social Cohesion Radar. In separate analyses of 34 Western and 22 Asian societies, the authors explore the associations of economic, social, political, and cultural conditions with cohesion, as well as the associations between cohesion and population well-being. The results suggest that while some correlates (such as economic prosperity) can indeed be considered universal, others (e.g. income inequality, political freedom) work differently in Western and Asian societies. The authors link these findings to sociological and cross-cultural psychological theories on Asian modernization and Asian values. The practical conclusion is that not all policy recommendations for strengthening social cohesion can easily travel from one world region to another.

show abstract

“…The relevance of the institutional quality-related variables lies in the fact that these variables may have information about the hedonic well-being, which implies as to how people experience their daily life in relation to other people as well as government (Graham & Nikolova, 2015). Delhey and Steckermeier (2016) argues that higher quality institutions improve SWB by increasing the quality of the social fabric that affects both citizen-to-government and citizen-to-citizen relations. Good institutions reduce the uncertainty and transaction costs associated with these relations by promoting trust among citizens as well as between citizens and government (Bjørnskov et al, 2010).…”

Section: Methodology: Country-levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a strong positive relationship between SWB and health (Dolan et al, 2008). Sometimes the individual-level variables are integrated into an index, as in the case of Good Life Index (GLI) proposed by Delhey and Steckermeier (2016). Their GLI is based on seven components of life in different domains where health and financial security are among the domains.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contradictory effects of religiosity on subjective well-being

Evrensel

2018

Cogent Economics & Finance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides empirical evidence for the contradictory effects of religiosity on subjective well-being (SWB). While a number of empirical studies demonstrate that higher religiosity is associated with higher happiness at the level of the individual, the published lists of happiest countries indicate that these countries are not religious. In this article, the empirical analysis is conducted at the level of the individual using a respondent-based dataset with 347,947 subjects in 96 countries as well as at the level of the country using a cross-section dataset including the same 96 countries. The empirical results at the respondent level indicate that happier people are likely to be female, younger, and healthier with higher social status and a stronger sense of control over their lives. Additionally, higher religiosity is associated with higher levels of SWB. At the country level, while religiosity tends to lose its statistical significance or negatively affect SWB, institutional quality emerges as a positive covariate of SWB. However, the country-level results are sensitive to alternative measures of SWB and religiosity.

show abstract

The Good Life, Affluence, and Self-reported Happiness: Introducing the Good Life Index and Debunking Two Popular Myths

Cited by 32 publications

References 38 publications

Better for Everyone? Egalitarian Culture and Social Wellbeing in Europe

Better for Everyone? Egalitarian Culture and Social Wellbeing in Europe

Social Cohesion and Its Correlates: A Comparison of Western and Asian Societies

Contradictory effects of religiosity on subjective well-being

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About