Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of Happiness Studies
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies 2/2020

14-02-2019 | Research Paper

The Effects of Income on Happiness in East and South Asia: Societal Values Matter?

Authors: Hock-Eam Lim, Daigee Shaw, Pei-Shan Liao, Hongbo Duan

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 2/2020

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

During the last two decades, economic studies on happiness have grown rapidly in particular, studies on the effect of income on happiness. Ng (Pac Econ Rev 7(1):51–63, 2002) has highlighted the East-Asian happiness gap. The East Asian countries, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, are performing well economically, however, performing poorly in happiness. Societal values have been suggested to be the potential explanation of this happiness gap. Nevertheless, the effects of societal values on happiness are yet to be explored fully. This paper aims to estimate the effect of income on happiness and examine the moderating effect of societal values in the context of the East-Asian happiness gap using the World Values Survey (WVS) data. The WVS (waves 6, 2010–2014) consists of nationally representative sample of 14,447 respondents from the various East and South Asian countries. It provides measurements of societal values, subjective well-being and other socio-demographic variables including income. We found that the effect of income on happiness is the lowest (and insignificant) in Thailand and Philippines; and the highest (and strongly significant) in South Korea and Taiwan. The effect of income becomes insignificant once it is moderated by the societal values. Societal values matter to explain the East-Asian happiness gap and might refute the relevance of Easterlin paradox.
next article Can a Multilevel STI/HIV Prevention Strategy for High Risk African American Adolescents Improve Life Satisfaction?

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) is a group of social scientists and management scholar which collected data to study cross-cultural leadership. It covers middle managers from different organizations across the various societies. See http://​www.​uvic.​ca/​gustavson/​globe/​index.​php.
 
2
Some Asian societies are not available in WVS wave 6, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Brunei.
 
3
The sample size of China and India appear low as compared to their population. However, the samples are national representative. As reported by WVS, the sampling design covers the whole areas of China and India. In China, the targeted population is all adults (age of 18–75) in all 31 provinces. It is stratified into the seven regions. The regions are further stratified by rural and urban. In India, the multiple level stratification sampling design is used: parliamentary area (all the 543 parliamentary areas), assembly area, location (polling booth), and respondent (EC list).
 
4
In the literature of the economics of happiness, life satisfaction and happiness are used interchangeably (see Easterlin 2001). Previous studies have found the either “happiness” or “life satisfaction”, it produces similar conclusions (Di Tella and MacCulloch 2008). Thus, the present paper uses the word “life satisfaction” and “happiness” interchangeably.
 
5
The sub-values are multi-point index (range from zero to one) which are constructed from items as in WVS. The relevant items are recoded into the same polarity (low scores represent weak values; high scores represent strong values). Then, the items are standardized into the same scale range (zero to one) and averaged to represent the sub-index (for details, see http://​www.​cambridge.​org/​cl/​download_​file/​473755/​).
 
6
Post-materialist represents the value orientations that emphasizing on autonomy and self-expression; whereas, materialist represents the values orientations that focusing on economic and physical security (Inglehard 2008).
 
7
The ordered logit model has the following assumptions: the values of dependent variable are ordinal and larger values are corresponded to higher level of happiness; the error terms are assumed to be logistically distributed; the observations are independent from each other; there is no perfect multicollinearity among the independent variables; a large sample size is needed. See Long (1997).
 
8
The latent value of happiness (y*) is the fitted values of the estimated Model 4 that based on the 10 deciles of income (X-axis, income) and three levels of societal values (0, 0.5, and 1, as represented by the three lines in the Fig. 3). Since the Model 4 is estimated based on the pooled data of the Asian countries, Fig. 3 shows how the societal values moderate the income-happiness relationship among these Asian countries.
 
Literature
Angeles, L. (2011). A closer look at the Easterlin Paradox. Journal of Socio-Economics,40, 33–67.
Arrindell, W. A., Hatzichristou, C., Wensink, J., Rosenberg, E., van Twillert, B., Stedema, J., et al. (1997). Dimensions of national culture as predictors of cross-national differences in subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences,23(1), 37–53.
Bohnke, P. (2008). Does society matter? Life satisfaction in the enlarged Europe. Social Indicators Research,87, 189–210.
Boo, M. C., Yen, S. H., & Lim, H. E. (2016). A note on happiness and life satisfaction in Malaysia. Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies,53(2), 261–277.
Chophel, S. (2012). Culture, public policy and happiness. Journal of Bhutan Studies,26, 82–99.
Clark, A. E., Frijters, P., & Shields, M. A. (2008). Relative income, happiness, and utility: An explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and other puzzles. Journal of Economic Literature,46(1), 95–144.
Cohen, J., Cohen, P., Leona, S., & West, H. S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.
Di Tella, R., & MacCulloch, R. (2008). Gross national happiness as an answer to the Easterlin Paradox? Journal of Development Economics,86(1), 22–42.
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin,95, 542–575.
Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In P. A. David & M. W. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honour of Moses Abramovitz (pp. 89–125). New York: Academic Press.
Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: Towards a unified theory. Economic Journal,111, 465–484.
Easterlin, R. A., & Angelescu, L. (2009). Happiness and growth the world over: time series evidence on the happiness-income paradox. IZA DP No. 4060. Germany: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Easterlin, R. A., Angelescu, L., & Jacqueline, S. Z. (2011). The impact of modern economic growth on urban-rural differences in subjective well-being. Journal of World Development,39(12), 2187–2198.
Haller, M., & Hadler, M. (2006). How social relations and structures can produce happiness and unhappiness: An international comparative analysis. Social Indicators Research,75(2), 169–216.
Helliwell, F. J. (2003). How’s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being. Economic Modelling,20, 331–360.
Helliwell, F. J. (2006). Well-being, social capital and public policy: What’s new? Economic Journal,116, 34–35.
Heukamp, F. H., & Arino, M. A. (2011). Does country matter for subjective well-being? Social Indicators Research,100(1), 155–170.
Hitokoto, H. (2014). Interdependent happiness: cultural happiness under the East Asian Cultural Mandate. JICA-RI Working Paper no.79. Japan: JICA Research Institute.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations, The globe study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Inglehard, R. (2008). Changing values among Western publics from 1970 to 2006. West European Politics,31, 130–146.
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jaafar, J. L., Idris, M. A., Ismuni, J., Fei, Y., Jaafar, S., Ahmad, Z., et al. (2012). The sources of happiness to the Malaysians and Indonesians: Data from a smaller nation. In Gaol, F. L. (Ed.), Procedia social and behavioral sciences volume 65. Proceedings of the international congress on interdisciplinary business and social science (pp. 1–7). NY, USA. Retrieved from https://​umexpert.​um.​edu.​my/​file/​publication/​00001054_​89483.​pdf. Accessed 27 Feb 2018.
Jacobs, M. (2014). Cultural impact on lean six sigma and corporate success: Casual analyses considering the effects of national culture and leadership. Dordrecht: Springer.
Levin, J. (2014). Religion and happiness among Israeli Jews: Findings from the ISSP Religion III Survey. Journal of Happiness Studies,15(3), 593–611.
Li, M. W. L., & Bond, H. M. (2010). Does individual secularism promote life satisfaction? The moderating role of societal development. Social Indicators Research,99, 443–453.
Liao, P. S. (2014). More happy or less unhappy? Comparison of the balanced and unbalanced designs for the response scale of general happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies,15(6), 1407–1423.
Liao, P. S., Tu, S. H., & Lung, S. C. C. (2016). The moderating effect of community interaction on individual well-being during hot days. In D. Wang & S. He (Eds.), Mobility, sociability and well-being of urban living (pp. 265–282). Dordrecht: Springer.
Long, J. S. (1997). Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Lu, L., & Gilmour, R. (2004). Culture and conceptions of happiness: Individual oriented and social oriented SWB. Journal of Happiness Studies,5(3), 269–291.
Lu, L., Gilmour, R., & Kao, S.-F. (2001). Cultural values and happiness: An East-West dialogue. Journal of Social Psychology,141(4), 477–493.
Migheli, M. (2009). Religiosity and happiness: An ever-winning couple? An answer from India. Working Paper No. 142. Piedmont, Italy: University of Eastern.
Ng, Y. K. (2002). The East-Asian happiness gap: Speculating on causes and implications. Pacific Economic Review,7(1), 51–63.
Opfinger, M. (2014). ‘United in diversity’—Does social diversity increase subjective well-being? Research Papers in Economics No. 10/14. Germany: Universität Trier.
Otsuka, Y., Hori, M., & Kawahito, J. (2013). Income is not associated with positive affect, life satisfaction, and subjective happiness among Japanese workers. In H. Knoop & A. Delle Fave (Eds.), Well-being and culture: Cross-cultural advancements in positive psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 171–182). Dordrecht: Springer.
Rokeach, M. (1968). Beliefs, attitudes and values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schwatz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1–65). Orlando: Academic Press.
Stutzer, A., & Frey, B. S. (2012). Recent developments in the economics of happiness: A selective overview. Discussion Paper Series, IZA DP No 7078 Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Suhail, K., & Chaudhry, H. R. (2004). Predictors of subjective well-being in an Eastern Muslim culture. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,23(3), 359–376.
Takagi, D., Kondo, K., & Kawachi, I. (2013). Social participation and mental health: Moderating effects of gender, social role and rurality. BMC Public Health,13, 701–709.
Tsou, M.-W., & Liu, J.-T. (2001). Happiness and domain satisfaction in Taiwan. Journal of Happiness Studies,2, 269–288.
Uchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V., & Kitayama, S. (2004). Cultural constructions of happiness: Theory and empirical evidence. Journal of Happiness Studies,5(3), 223–239.
Uchida, Y., & Oishi, S. (2016). The happiness of individuals and the collective. Japanese Psychological Research,58(1), 125–141.
Valente, R. R., & Berry, B. J. L. (2016). Working hours and life satisfaction: A cross-cultural comparison of Latin America and the United States. Journal of Happiness Studies,17(3), 1173–1204.
Veenhoven, R. (1998). Two state-trait discussions on happiness. A reply to Stones et al. Social Indicators Research,43(3), 211–225.
Veenhoven, R. (2012). Cross-national differences in happiness: Cultural measurement bias or effect of culture? International Journal of Wellbeing,2(4), 333–353.
Wang, S. (2014). Measuring and explaining subjective well-being in Korea. Research Monograph 2014-02. Sejong-si: Korea Development Institute.
Wei, X., Huang, S., Stodolska, M., & Yu, Y. (2015). Leisure time, leisure activities and happiness in China. Journal of Leisure Research,47(5), 556–576.
Welzel, C. (2006). Democratization as an emancipative process: The neglected role of mass motivations. European Journal of Political Research,45(6), 871–896.
Welzel, C. (2013a). Freedom rising: Human empowerment and the quest for emancipation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Welzel, C., & Inglehard, R. (2010). Agency, values and well-being: A human development model. Social Indicators Research,97, 43–63.
Welzel, C., Inglehard, R., & Kligemann, H. D. (2003). The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis. European Journal of Political Research,42(3), 341–379.
Wucherpfennig, J., & Deutsch, F. (2009). Modernization and democracy: Theories and evidence revisited. Living Reviews in Democracy,1, 1–9.
Ye, D., Ng, Y. K., & Lian, Y. (2015). Culture and happiness. Social Indicators Research,123(2), 519–547.
Zagorski, K. (2011). Income and happiness in time of post-communist modernization. Social Indicators Research,104(2), 331–349.
Metadata
Title
The Effects of Income on Happiness in East and South Asia: Societal Values Matter?
Authors
Hock-Eam Lim
Daigee Shaw
Pei-Shan Liao
Hongbo Duan
Publication date
14-02-2019
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 2/2020
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00088-9

Other articles of this Issue 2/2020

Journal of Happiness Studies 2/2020 Go to the issue

Research Paper

Income and Mental Well-Being: Personality Traits as Moderators

Research Paper

Why are Dispositional Enviers not Satisfied With Their Lives? An Investigation of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Pathways Among Adolescents and Young Adults

Research Paper

Corruption Takes Away Happiness: Evidence from a Cross-National Study

Correction

Correction to: Assessing U.S. Racial and Gender Differences in Happiness, 1972–2016: An Intersectional Approach

Research Paper

Core Beliefs Challenge and Posttraumatic Growth: Mediating Role of Rumination Among Internally Displaced Survivors of Terror Attacks

Research Paper

Generativity and Positive Emotion in Older Adults: Mediation of Achievement and Altruism Goal Attainment Across Three Cultures