The World Values Survey seems like a good starting point for examining nation level life satisfaction and then correlating it with other indicators.
Diener (2000) summarises this research on
mean levels of life satisfaction for selected nations from the World
Values Survey (World Values Study Group, 1994), conducted with
representative samples of approximately 1,000 respondents per
nation between 1990 and 1993. The purchasing power parity
figure is the percentage of purchasing power (based on a
standard "basket" of goods) that the average person in each
country can buy with his or her yearly income, compared with
the average purchasing power of individuals in the United
States. The correlation between mean purchasing power income
and mean life satisfaction was .62 across all nations in the
survey. The finding that wealthier nations have higher levels of
reported well-being has been replicated several times (see
Diener & Suh, 1999). One reason that wealthy nations may be
hap- pier is that they are more likely to fulfill basic human needs
for food, shelter, and health, as well as to have better
human-fights records (Diener et al., 1995).
OECD Life Index
I performed a quick analysis of data from up to 36 countries from the OECD Better Life Index Site. You can download the datafile used directly from http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/. The R code, data file, and output of this draft set of analyses is available here, along with a list of the included countries.
I obtained the following correlations between other variables and self-reported life satisfaction (r is correlation; n is number of countries):
## r n
## Rooms.per.person 0.70 30
## Personal.earnings 0.67 34
## Employment.rate 0.63 36
## Households.income 0.59 32
## Water.quality 0.59 36
## Long.term.unemployment.rate -0.58 34
## Self.reported.health 0.58 34
## Life.expectancy 0.57 36
## Dwellings.with.basic.facilities 0.54 32
## Social.network 0.50 36
## Time.devoted.to.leisure.and.personal.care 0.43 21
## Household.financial.wealth 0.41 31
## Voter.turn.out 0.36 36
## Educational.attainment 0.22 35
## Students..skills 0.21 36
## Air.pollution -0.18 36
## Housing.expenditure 0.12 32
## Years.in.education 0.12 35
## Consultation.on.rule.making 0.12 35
## Employees.working.very.long.hours -0.09 33
## Job.security 0.08 32
## Homicide.rate -0.07 36
## Assault.rate -0.02 36
References
- Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American psychologist, 55, 34.
- Diener, E., Diener, M., & Diener, C. (1995). Factors predicting the
subjective well-being of nations. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 69, 851-864.
- Diener, E., & Sub, E. (1999). Societies we live in: International compar-
isons. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being:
The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 434-452). New York:
Russell Sage Foundation.
- World Values Study Group. (1994). World Values Survey, 1981-1994 and
1990-1993 [Computer file, ICPSR version]. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute
for Social Research.
