The Quebec Convergence and Canadian Life Satisfaction, 1985–2008

Abstract

De plus en plus de sondages, réalisés par des gouvernements ou des entreprises privées, tentent de mesurer la satisfaction face à la vie, cette mesure étant obtenue grâce à des instruments d'auto-évaluation. Au Canada, de tels sondages n'ont pas été faits de façon systématique au fil des ans, mais les données recueillies depuis 1985, de même que des sondages récents réalisés plusieurs fois selon une même structure, facilitent beaucoup l'analyse que nous pouvons maintenant faire de l'évolution de cette satisfaction dans les diverses régions du pays. Dans cet article, je montre que, depuis 25 ans, la satisfaction face à la vie s'est beaucoup accrue au Québec quand on compare cette province au reste du Canada, et que l'ampleur de cette hausse du bienêtre subjectif est comparable à l'effet qu'aurait la multiplication par trois du revenu moyen des ménages.Mots clés : Canada, Québec, bien-être subjectif, bonheur, Révolution tranquille, revenu Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebec as compared with the rest of Canada. The scale of this increase in well-being is comparable to the imputed effect of more than a trebling of mean household income.

Are Quebecers More Stressed Out at Work than Others? An Investigation into the Differences between Quebec and the Rest of Canada in Level of Work Stress

“…The estimated coefficients were always positive and statistically significant and tended to be larger in the latter years relative to the earlier ones. In other words, there is no evidence that this persistent difference in the work stress reported in Quebec is tapering off over time (as was found by Barrington-Leigh [2013] when analyzing differences in life satisfaction across jurisdictions, a point to which we return later).…”

“…Rather than examining stress from either work or life, we could take a more positive approach and examine life satisfaction, following the lead of Barrington-Leigh (2013). He analyzes the evolution of satisfaction-withlife responses in Quebec from 1985 to 2008, which started off at a much lower level than in other jurisdictions but then surpassed them by the early 2000s-a phenomenon attributable to the large increase in income in that province.…”

The Happy Culture: A Theoretical, Meta-Analytic, and Empirical Review of the Relationship Between Culture and Wealth and Subjective Well-Being

“…Indeed, as Hofstede (2001) notes, countries that emphasize protecting the weak and maintaining equality (i.e., low masculinity and power distance) are more likely to limit economic freedom, possibly adversely impact long-term growth, and may introduce excessive regulation that itself reduces SWB ( Gehring, 2013 ). As illustration, consider the Canadian province of Quebec, which has extensive social services and concomitantly high levels of life satisfaction, both substantively higher than the rest of Canada ( Barrington-Leigh, 2013 ). It also has the highest level of per capita debt and highest debt service costs ( Speer, 2014 ), despite already receiving federal transfer or equalization payments approaching 10 billion dollars annually, which calls to question the long-term sustainability of this path ( Dubuc, 2014 ).…”

How Happy are Your Neighbours? Variation in Life Satisfaction among 1200 Canadian Neighbourhoods and Communities

“…Already there is some hint that big cities are not happy havens, even if Quebec City is the happiest among them [13]. The high relative happiness of the Province of Quebec and of Quebec City is the consequence of a remarkable 25-year upward trajectory of life satisfaction in Quebec relative to the rest of the country [36]. Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for average life satisfaction and its within-community standard deviation, as well as the sense of belonging to the local community, in addition to demographic and economic characteristics commonly studied in the literature.…”