National Societal, Economic, and Religious Factors Underlying Perceived Happiness

Various explanatory factors for perceived happiness have been identified in cross-country comparisons, but their relative importance and causal relationships remain unknown. Associations and causality were studied between 17 societal, economic, and religious variables contributing to happiness scores on the World Happiness Report (WHR) in 147 countries. In a correlation analysis, the strongest association with national happiness scores was observed for the median gross domestic product (GDP)/capita (r squared 0.69), followed by the mean GDP/capita (0.65), tertiary education (0.42), corruption (−0.41), democracy index (0.35), religious non-affiliation (0.31), and consanguinity (−0.25). Bayesian statistical analysis indicated strong causal cascades originating from democracy (a positive effect) and, to a lesser degree, corruption (a negative effect) during the years 1945–1985 to subsequent national happiness levels, with a delay of several decades. The results were confirmed to have good reproducibility with Bootstrap resampling, indicating robust findings. Although the median GDP/capita had the strongest association with happiness in the cross-sectional analysis, it was not identified as a primary causal factor in the Bayesian analysis, in which high levels of democracy and low levels of corruption were entangled with median GDP/capita as apparent prerequisites for perceived happiness. Our results suggest that the median GDP should be used as an indicator of the economic prosperity of citizens instead of the currently established mean GDP when studying the links between economy, democracy, and well-being across countries.