World Happiness Report 2023 38 social support can be seen to have similar proportionate effects on positive and negative emotions as on life evaluations. Freedom and generosity have even larger associations with positive affect than with the Cantril ladder. Negative affect is significantly ameliorated by social support, freedom, and the absence of corruption. In the fourth column, we re-estimate the life evaluation equation from column 1, adding both positive and negative affect to partially implement the Aristotelian presumption that sustained positive emotions are important supports for a good life.12 The results continue to buttress a finding in psychology that the existence of positive emotions matters much more than the absence of negative ones when predicting either longevity13 or resistance to the common cold.14 Consistent with this evidence, we find that positive affect has a large and highly significant impact in the final equation of Table 2.1, while negative affect has none. In a parallel way, we find in the final section of this chapter that the effects of a positive social environment are larger than the effects of loneliness. As for the coefficients on the other variables in the fourth column, the changes are substantial only on those variables—especially freedom and generosity —that have the largest impacts on positive affect. Thus we can infer that positive emotions play a strong role in supporting life evaluations, and that much of the impact of freedom and generosity on life evaluations is channelled through their influence on positive emotions. That is, freedom and generosity have large impacts on positive affect, which in turn has a major impact on life evaluations. The Gallup World Poll does not have a widely available measure of life purpose to test whether it also would play a strong role in support of high life evaluations. Table 2.1: Regressions to Explain Average Happiness across Countries (Pooled OLS) Dependent Variable Independent Variable Cantril Ladder (0-10) Positive Affect (0-1) Negative Affect (0-1) Cantril Ladder (0-10) Log GDP per capita 0.359 -.015 -.001 0.392 (0.067)*** (0.009) (0.007) (0.065)*** Social support (0-1) 2.526 0.318 -.337 1.865 (0.356)*** (0.056)*** (0.046)*** (0.35)*** Healthy life expectancy at birth 0.027 -.0005 0.003 0.028 (0.01)*** (0.001) (0.001)*** (0.01)*** Freedom to make life choices (0-1) 1.331 0.371 -.090 0.505 (0.297)*** (0.041)*** (0.039)** (0.278)* Generosity 0.537 0.088 0.027 0.33 (0.256)** (0.032)*** (0.027) (0.245) Perceptions of corruption (0-1) -.716 -.009 0.094 -.712 (0.262)*** (0.027) (0.022)*** (0.249)*** Positive affect (0-1) 2.285 (0.331)*** Negative affect (0-1) 0.185 (0.388) Year fixed effects Included Included Included Included Number of countries 156 156 156 156 Number of observations 1,964 1,959 1,963 1,958 Adjusted R-squared 0.757 0.439 0.334 0.782 Notes: This is a pooled OLS regression for a tattered panel explaining annual national average Cantril ladder responses from all available surveys from 2005 through 2022. See Technical Box 2 for detailed information about each of the predictors. Coefficients are reported with robust standard errors clustered by country (in parentheses). ***, **, and * indicate significance at the 1, 5, and 10 percent levels respectively.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQwMjQ=