Abstract
While numerous studies show there is a strong correlation between the wealth of nations (GDP) and happiness of their adult members, the data collected within Children’s Worlds study (n > 35.000, age 813) fails to reproduce the same relationship in case of children’s happiness. Moreover, children from highincome countries (South Korea, United Kingdom) have been found to be the least satisfied with school and also with life as a whole in the sample, and mediumincome countries (Romania and Columbia) score very high in school satisfaction and subjective well-being. At a first glance, these results seem to challenge the conventional wisdom that investments in education and improved educational policies contribute to a better education and, in the end, to a higher wellbeing. In this chapter I will try to show how Ruut Veenhoven’s livability theory (1993) can help solving this puzzle. I will argue that apart from its merits in linking subjective well-being with fulfilment of needs, which makes it probably the only major sociological paradigm of variation of subjective well-being, the livability theory proves its usefulness by its more refined, dual approach. Its implication is that not only the offerings of society matter for individual happiness, but also its requirements. In this theoretical framework we can understand better how the pressure for achievement in the countries with highly demanding school systems stresses children and ultimate conduce to lower levels of happiness, irrespective of the wealth of these societies.
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In a later article, the same authors found a positive correlation between national averages of adult subjective well-being and children subjective well-being but only excluding Romania and South Korea. They also conclude that their “attempts to analyze the macro factors associated with between country differences in mean subjective well-being scores is hampered by the relatively small number of countries in the sample” (Bradshaw and Rees 2017, p. 11).
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Bălțătescu, S. (2021). Ruut Veenhoven’s Livability Concept and Children’s Happiness Around the Globe. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) The Pope of Happiness. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 82. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53779-1_1
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