Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the countries over the period of 10 years by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA). Based on rational and factual parameters such as freedom of press, freedom of religion, percentage of export in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), index of globalization, life expectancy at birth, gender ratio etc., this paper attempts to measure the efficiency of happiness. A combination of social and economic factors has been used to measure technical efficiency. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it measures the relative efficiency of all the countries included in the study. The nations have been ranked as per their relative efficiency and the peer group has been formed. Second a comparison between the rich and the poor countries have been done to test empirically whether the economic growth enhances the happiness among people. Presently, more than 3,000 studies have been published on happiness and Veenhoven in 2004 created a database called World Database of Happiness. The World Database of Happiness has attempted to present the available research findings on happiness. Part of the findings on happiness in nations is available in ‘States of nations’. For the research purpose, States of Nations and the data published by have been considered. Although happiness has been quantified and the existing literature has sufficient empirical evidences of the same, in the present context, the relative efficiency has been calculated for the countries on basis of objective and subjective happiness parameters. As per the literature, happiness has two aspects (1) objective and (2) subjective. Objective parameters are external to the individuals and covers material living parameters viz. GDP growth, income, nutrition, mortality rate, literacy etc. However, Subjective indicators measure the quality of life of the individuals. These are summarized as ‘‘subjective well-being’’. The various parameters considered in the study capture different aspects of happiness. The result shows how the government can increase the happiness of the people by analyzing the behavior and expectations. People express their preference explicitly about political parties, religion believes, law and order situation, trust in official institutions etc. Although, the behavior of people largely depends upon availability of goods and services in the market, the government can make budgets according to priority or preferences of people. Another way to increase happiness can be done by analyzing the peer group, which is an outcome of DEA. This shows the nations which are similar in terms of their economic and social conditions. The government can compare the prevailing conditions in different countries that improve the condition in their respective country. This could be an effective method as some of the parameters can be replicable in order to make people happier. The limitation of this study is lack of availability of data for many countries. As the number of countries increases, a change in the relative efficiency can be observed. Therefore, a future study can be conducted where the relevant data can be collected and a more global result can be obtained.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrews, F. M., & Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: Americans’ perceptions of quality of life. New York: Plenum Press.
Argyle, M. (2001a). The psychology of happiness (2nd ed.). Hove: Routledge.
Argyle, M. (2001b). The psychology of happiness (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Blanchflower, D. G., & Oswald A. J. (2000). Well-being over time in Britain and the USA. Mimeo. Available at:http://www.dartmouth.edu/blnchr/papers/Wellbeingnew.pdf.
Bolle, F., Okhrin, Y., & Vogel, C. (2009). A note on interdependent happiness. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 38, 713–721.
Borland, J., Hirschberg, J. G., & Lye, J. N. (2001). Data reduction of discrete responses: An application of cluster analysis. Applied Economics Letters, 8, 149–153.
Buchanan, W. (1953). How nations see each other. A study in public opinion. Urbana, USA: University of Illinois Press.
Cantril, H. (1965). The pattern of human concern. New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA: Rutgers University Press.
Clark, A. E., & Oswald, A. J. (1994). Unhappiness and unemployment. Economic Journal, 104, 648–659.
Cooper, W. W., Seiford, L. M., & Tone, K. (2000). Data envelopment analysis. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Cooper, W. W., Thompson, R. G., & Thrall, R. M. (1996). Extensions and new developments.
Cummins, R. A. (1993). Comprehensive quality of life scale for adults. Manual ComQol-A4. Australia: Deakin University, School of Psychology.
Cummins, R. (2000). ‘Objective and subjective quality of life: An interactive model’. Social Indicators Research, 52(1), 55–72.
D’Acci, L. (2011). Measuring well-being and progress. Social Indicator Research, 104, 47–65.
Diener, E., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2002). Will money increase subjective well-being? A literature review and guide to needed research. Social Indicators Research, 57, 119–169.
Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Beyond money: Toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1), 1–31.
Diener, E., Shao, L., Smith, H. L., & Suh, E. M. (1995). National differences in reported subjective wellbeing: Why do they occur? Social Indicators Research, 34, 7–32.
Diener, E., & Suh, E. (1997). Measuring quality of life: Economic, social and subjective indicators. Social Indicators Research, 40, 189–216.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276–303.
Duncan, G. (2010). Should happiness-maximization be the goal of government? Journal of Happiness Studies, 11, 163–178.
Easterlin et al. (2010). The happiness-income paradox revisited. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 13, 2010.
Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In I. P. A. David & M. W. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz (pp. 89–125). New York: Academic Press.
Easterlin, R. A. (2003). Explaining happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(19), 11176–11183.
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., & Lovell, C. A. K. (1994). Production frontiers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Farrell, M. J. (1957). The measurement of productive efficiency. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, 120(3), 253–290.
Felce, D., & Perry, J. (1995). Quality of life: Its definition and measurement. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 16(1), 51–74.
Ferriss, A. (2006), History of QOL studies from a sociological perspective. Social Indicators Research, 76(53) ‘‘The quality-of-life (QOL) research movement: Past, present, and future’’, pp. 163–187.
Frey, B. S., & Stutzer, A. (2002a). Happiness and economics: How the economy and institutions affect human well-being. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Frey, B. S., & Stutzer, A. (2002b). What can economists learn from happiness research. Journal of Economic Literature, 40, 402–435.
Gallup, G. P. (1976). Human needs and satisfactions: A global survey. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40, 459–467.
Gomes, C. S., Marques, J., Pinto, M. L., Castro, E. A., Gomes, P. S., Gomes, G., et al. (2008). A multidimensionalidade do conceito de qualidade de vida. Sociedade e Territo′rio, 42, 137–146.
Graham, C., Eggers, A., & Sukhtankar, S. (2004). Does happiness pay? An exploration based on panel data from Russia. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 55, 319–342.
Headey, B., & Wearing, A. (1992). Understanding happiness: A theory of subjective well-being. Melbourne, Australia: Longman Cheshire Pty Limited.
Helliwell, J., & Huang, H. (2008a). How’s your government? International evidence linking good government and well-being. British Journal of Political Science, 38, 595–619.
Helliwell, J., & Huang, H. (2008). How’s your government? International evidence linking good government and well-being. British Journal of Political Science, 38, 595–619. Cambridge University Press.
Hilke, B., Jan, D., Christian, W., & Hao, Y. (2009). The China puzzle: Falling happiness in a rising economy. Journal of Happiness Studies, 10, 387–405.
Hirschberg, J. G., & D. J. Aigner (1987) A classification for medium and small firms by time-of-day electricity usage. In Papers and proceedings of the eight annual north american conference of the International Association of Energy Economists, Cambridge, MA, November 19–21, 1986, pp. 253–257.
Hirschberg, J. G., & Dayton, J. R. (1996). Detailed patterns of intra-industry trade in processed food. In: I M. Sheldon & P. C. Abbott (Eds.), Industrial organization and trade in the food industries (pp. 141–159). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Hirschberg, J. G., Maasoumi, E., & Slottje, D. J. (1991). Cluster analysis for measuring welfare and quality of life across countries. Journal of Econometrics, 50, 131–150.
Hirschberg, J. G., Maasoumi, E., & Slottje, D. J. (2000a). Clusters of attributes and well-being in the US. Journal of Applied Econometrics. Wiley.
Hirschberg, J. G., Maasoumi, E., & Slottje, D. J. (2000b). The environment and the quality of life in the United States over time. Environmental Modelling and Software, 16(6), 525–532(8).
Hirschberg, J. G., & Slottje, D. J. (1994). An empirical Bayes approach to analyzing earnings differentials for various occupations and industries. Journal of Econometrics, 61, 65–79.
Inglehart, R. F. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kacapyr, E. (2008). Cross country determinants of satisfaction with life. International Journal of Social Economics, 35(6), 400–416.
Kalmijn, W., & Veenhoven, R. (2005). Measuring inequality of happiness in nations: In search for proper statistics. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 357–396.
Kaufman, L., & Rousseeuw, P. J. (1990). Finding groups in data: An introduction to cluster analysis. New York: Wiley.
Kaufmann, D., Aart, K., & Massimo, M.(1999). Governance matters. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2196.
Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A., & Mastruzzi, M. (2008). Governance Matters VII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996–2007. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4654, World Bank 2008. Data available at: www.govindicators.org.
Kenny, C. (1999). Does growth cause happiness or does happiness cause growth? Kyklos, 52(1), 3–26.
Layard, R. (2005a). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. London: Allen Lane.
Layard, R. (2005b). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. New York: Penguin.
Lepage, A. (2009). The quality of life as attribute of sustainability. The TQM Journal, 21(2), 105–115.
McCall, S. (1975). Quality of life. Social Indicators Research, 2(2), 229–248.
Michalos, A. C. (1991). Global report on student wellbeing, volume I: Life satisfaction and happiness. New York, USA: Springer.
Myers, D. G. (2004). Psychology. New York: Worth.
Oswald, A. J. (1997). Happiness and economic performance. The Economics Journal, 107, 1815–1831.
Ott, J. C. (2010). Good governance and happiness in nations: Technical quality precedes democracy and quality beats size. Journal of Happiness Studies, 11, 353–368.
Ramírez, J. C. de. P., & Tovar, L. S. (2002). ‘Significación de la Calidade de Vida y Revitalización del Espacio Urbano. Un Estudio de Caso. Fermentum, 34, 415–446.
Ravallion, M., & Lokshin, M. (2000). Identifying welfare effects from subjective questions. Economica, 68, 335–357.
Rhode, E., & Southwick, L., Jr. (1993). Variations in public and private university performance. Applications of Management Science, 7, 145–170.
Sinauny-Stern, S., Mehrez, A., & Barboy, A. (1994). Academic departments efficiency via DEA. Computers & Operations Research, 21(5), 543–556.
Thanassoulis, E., & Dustan, P. (1994). Guiding schools to improved performance using data envelopment analysis: An illustration with data from a local education authority. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 45(11), 1247–1262.
Tomkins, C., & Green, R. (1988). An experiment in the use of data envelopment analysis.
Türksever, A. N. E., & Atalik, G. (2001). Possibilities and limitations for the measurement of the quality of life in urban areas. Social Indicators Research, 53(2), 163–187.
Veenhoven, R. (1993). Happiness in nations: Subjective appreciation of life in 56 nations. 1946–1992. Rotterdam: Erasmus University Press.
Veenhoven, R. (1996). Developments in satisfaction research. Social Indicators Research, 37, 1–46.
Veenhoven, R. (1999). The four qualities of life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1, 1–39.
Veenhoven, R. (2004). Happiness as a public policy aim: The greatest happiness principle. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 658–678). Hoboken: Wiley.
Veenhoven, R. (2005). Inequality of happiness in nations: Introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 351–355.
Veenhoven, R. (2007). Trend average happiness in nations 1946–2006: How much people like the life they live. World Database of Happiness, Trend Report 2007-1. http://www.worlddatabaseofhappiness.
Veenhoven, R. (2010). World database of happiness, item bank. Erasmus University Rotterdam.
WHOQOL Group. (1995). Measuring quality of life. Available at: www.socialsciencegesis.de/en/social_monitoring/social_indicators/EU_Reporting/index.htm.
Winkelmann, L., & Winkelmann, R. (1998). Why are the unemployed so unhappy? Evidence from panel data. Economica, 65, 1–15.
World Bank. (1992). Governance and development. DC: Washington.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Debnath, R.M., Shankar, R. Does Good Governance Enhance Happiness: A Cross Nation Study. Soc Indic Res 116, 235–253 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0275-1
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0275-1