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Happiness and Leisure Across Countries: Evidence from International Survey Data

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[H]appiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace—Aristotle.

Abstract

We study the statistical link between leisure and happiness. Using survey data from 33 countries in 2007, we find that (1) certain leisure activities, leisure’s role in self-fulfillment and social interaction, and leisure’s relation to work and other spheres of life are significantly linked to individual happiness; (2) the effect of leisure quantity is not as important as other aspects of leisure; and (3) some leisure activities can be negatively associated with happiness. Consistent with findings in previous studies, family income and individual demographic variables such as age and health condition are significantly associated with happiness. National unemployment and political stability also have robustly significant effects on happiness.

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Notes

  1. Economies in our sample include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and Taiwan.

  2. The leisure activities include: Watch TV, Go to the movies, Go shopping, Read books, Attend cultural events, Get together with relatives, Get together with friends, Play cards, Listen to music, Join physical activities, Attend sporting events as a spectator, Do handicrafts, and Spend time on the internet.

  3. For the purpose of illustration, we report here the actual weekly working hours instead of the log of weekly working hours.

  4. The 12 individual components are government stability, socioeconomic conditions, investment profile, internal conflict, external conflict, corruption, military in politics, religion in politics, law and order, ethnic tensions, democratic accountability, and bureaucracy quality.

  5. The predicted probabilities are calculated holding other variables at their sample mean.

  6. For the proportional odds model, an increase in activity frequency from “never” to “several times a year or less often” is assumed to be associated with the same marginal change in the probability of “very happy” as an increase in activity frequency from “several times a week” to “daily”.

  7. The odds ratio is calculated as exp(0.222)=1.25.

  8. Based on the numerical results in Table 4, we can calculate the predicted probability of being “very happy”, “fairly happy”, “not very happy”, and “not at all happy” for different respondents. According to regression 1 in Table 4, the average predicted probability of a person with excellent health being “very happy” is 50.6 %, while the predicted probability of a person with excellent health being “not at all happy” is only 0.32 %, holding other things constant. The probability is calculated as:

    $$ Prob(Y=m|X)=\frac{1} {1+\exp(-(\tau_{m}-X\beta))}- \frac{1}{1+\exp(-(\tau_{m-1}-X\beta))}, $$

    where m = 1 − 4 and τ is the cut point value, average across different countries.

  9. The partial derivative of happiness with respect to age is: \(\beta_{age}+2\beta_{age^{2}}age\). As a result, the age that individuals on average report the lowest level of happiness is \(age=-\beta_{age}/\left(2\beta_{age^{2}}\right)=0.02/(2\times0.0002)=50\).

  10. Coefficients on dummy variables for marital status such as widowed, divorced, separated, and never married (single), are robustly negative.

  11. Multilevel research has been widely employed in various fields such as education, health care and medicine, sociology, and geography (Paterson 1991; Hox and Kreft 1994; Jones and Duncan 1996; Langford et al. 1998; Hill et al. 2005; Larsen and Merlo 2005; Leyland and Goldstein 2001; Magnus et al. 2001). However, as pointed out by Schyns (2002), this technique is still in its infancy in studying the individual quality of life with a possible reason that often there are not enough cases at the macro-groups level (25 groups as the rule of thumb suggested by Jones et al. 1992).

  12. In our sample, South Africa is the only country in Africa.

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Correspondence to M. C. Sunny Wong.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8 and  9.

Table 8 Definitions of variables
Table 9 Frequencies of leisure activities—top and bottom 5 countries

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Wang, M., Wong, M.C.S. Happiness and Leisure Across Countries: Evidence from International Survey Data. J Happiness Stud 15, 85–118 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-013-9417-z

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