Who benefits from big government? A life satisfaction approach

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWhich impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglect possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. The paper addresses empirically the effects of government spending on subjective well-being of individuals belonging to different income groups.Our analysis is based on individual data from 25 European countries participating in the European Social Survey. In contrast to most previous studies we take account of the endogeneity between relative income position and reported life satisfaction by an instrumental variable approach.Our results suggest, first, that most government spending categories, including social protection, are on average negatively related to individual well-being. Secondly, estimated marginal effects of health, education and social protection spending at different income levels show that spending increases always have a stronger negative effect on high income groups' well-being than on low income groups' life satisfaction.For all government spending categories, marginal happiness effects of higher public spending are clearly negative for income groups at the top.

Socio-economic determinants of subjective wellbeing toward Sustainable Development Goals: An insight from a developing country

“…Happiness and life satisfaction of agricultural landholders are also on the higher side by odds of 1.29 (OR = 1.29; p < 0.01) and 1.41 (OR = 1.41; p < 0.05), respectively. The results of this study are also consistent with hypotheses and many previous studies that find a positive impact of income and household assets on SWB ( Alesina et al, 2004 ; Graham, 2011 ; Brown and Gray, 2016 ; Knoll and Pitlik, 2016 ; Krulichová, 2018 , etc.). Improving the level of income eases the debt constraints and raises the consumption level by individuals or households which further raises the level of satisfaction and thus increases happiness ( Pereira and Coelho, 2013 ).…”

“…Moreover, individual with poor health restrict themselves socially which create stress and cause a lowering of level of happiness. The results of our study are also in line with hypotheses and previous studies in which good health is positively related to SWB while poor health is negatively related to SWB ( Kahneman and Deaton, 2010 ; Garrett and James, 2013 ; Knoll and Pitlik, 2016 ). Hospitals’ satisfaction and services of hospitals also account for the wellbeing of people who avail or availed of the services when needed.…”

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

“…Similarly in dispute is the relationship that masculinity has with governance. That is, though the technical quality of government colludes with national happiness ( Helliwell & Huang, 2008 ; Ott, 2010 ), government spending as a percentage of GDP eventually collides, resulting in a negative relationship ( Bjørnskov, Dreher, & Fischer, 2007 ; Knoll & Pitlik, 2014 ; Oishi et al, 2011 ). In the short run, Okulicz-Kozaryn, Holmes, and Avery (2014) review Livability Theory, where government expenditures on improving living conditions are observed to increase SWB.…”

Welfare systems and mental health in OECD and EEA countries: a scoping review

“…Lone vs. Cohabiting motherhood and mental health. In the social expenditure group, all studies used social expenditure as their main exposure, however, authors used different labels for this concept such as Social expenditure (Dumbraveanu, 2015;Yur'yev, 2012;Knoll and Pitlik, 2016;Ono and Lee, 2013), Social spending (Baumbach and Gulis, 2014), Welfare generosity (Clench-Aas and Holte, 2018), Government expenditure (Flavin et al, 2011) and Government size (Composed of various public/social expenditure categories: defence, education, health, public order and safety, economic, general public services, social protection, other; Hessami, 2010). Hence, we grouped studies based on their primary outcome measures: 1.…”