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Are Women Happier than Men? Evidence from the Gallup World Poll

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Abstract

Women in nearly all countries of the world have lower incomes, are less educated, are more likely to be widowed or divorced, and report worse health than men. Based on the happiness literature, these inequalities should cause women to be less happy than men. This study investigates this hypothesis using the Gallup World Poll to estimate differences in happiness between men and women in 73 countries through country-specific ordinary least squares regressions. It then examines whether the magnitude of the female–male happiness gap can be explained by country characteristics, such as economic development, religion, or women’s rights. This paper provides evidence that women are either happier than men or that there is no significant difference between women and men in nearly all of the 73 countries examined; when comparing men and women with the same life circumstances, women are happier than men in nearly a quarter of the countries. The magnitude of the female–male happiness gap is not associated with economic development or women’s rights and there are no systematic patterns by geography or primary religion.

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Notes

  1. Specifically, the regressions in this paper include employment status, existence of a health problem, type of occupation, and whether the responded attended a religious ceremony in the previous week as control variables. Graham and Chattopadhay include measures of sadness and enjoyment yesterday. Sadness and enjoyment variables are included as a robustness checks in this paper due to their potential endogeneity with overall life satisfaction.

  2. The occupation variable is not available for Brazil and Hungary. Income data are not available for the Czech Republic, Denmark, Mali, Mozambique, and Panama.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Gallup Organization for providing me access to the Gallup World Poll and to Richard A. Easterlin for his guidance on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Jacqueline S. Zweig

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  1. Jacqueline S. Zweig
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Correspondence to Jacqueline S. Zweig.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 6.

Table 6 Countries included in the analysis
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Appendix 2

See Table 7

Table 7 Description of variables in the analysis
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Appendix 3

See Table 8.

Table 8 Mean difference in life satisfaction between women and men from each specification
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Appendix 4

See Table 9.

Table 9 Number of Observations in Regressions
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Appendix 5

See Table 10.

Table 10 Percent of observations missing when economic factors are included in the analysis
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Appendix 6

See Table 11.

Table 11 Probit regressions of whether a respondent did not answer the income question (dependent variable = 1 if income is missing; 0 otherwise)
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Appendix 7

See Table 12.

Table 12 Comparison of the Percent with Elementary Education from Gallup Data and UNESCO data
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Appendix 8

See Table 13.

Table 13 Coefficient on female when enjoyment and sadness are included as control variables
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Zweig, J.S. Are Women Happier than Men? Evidence from the Gallup World Poll. J Happiness Stud 16, 515–541 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9521-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9521-8

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