World Happiness Report 2023 96 cohesiveness of institutions and norms that underpins common-interest states should bring the focus on common-interest rather than special- interest benefits. This focus should show not just in the level of life satisfaction, but in a smaller dispersion of life satisfaction across people within a country. Figure 3.6 confronts this prediction with the data on life satisfaction. The two panels in the figure plot average life satisfaction against two measures of dispersion: the standard deviation of the individual scores (to the left) and the difference between the averages in the upper and lower halves of the individual scores (to the right). Again, we color the individual country markers by the color of the cluster to which it was assigned in Figure 3.2. The figure shows the expected pattern. When average life satisfaction is high its dispersion is low, and vice versa. Further, in each one of the graphs, we find the common-interest states systematically located in the lower right corner with high levels and less inequality in life satisfaction. This finding dovetails well with the observation in Goff et al.36 that levels of life satisfaction are negatively correlated with dispersion. Chapter 2 redux Finally, to tie our discussion to the more conventional analysis of happiness, we now explore how our measures of state effectiveness relate to the determinants of life satisfaction discussed in Chapter 2. Specifically, consider the six determinants of life satisfaction, which are included as right-hand-side variables in the regressions underlying Table 2.1. These variables are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity (we refer the reader to Chapter 2 for precise definitions). Figure 3.7 shows the relationships between, on the one hand, the average country score for each of the six Chapter 2 life-satisfaction determinants and, on the other hand, an index of state effectiveness. Photo by Kunal Kalra on Unsplash
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