Happiness and the quality of government

From John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, and Shun Wang:

This chapter uses happiness data to assess the quality of government. Our happiness data are drawn from the Gallup World Poll, starting in 2005 and extending to 2017 or 2018. In our analysis of the panel of more than 150 countries and generally over 1,500 national-level observations, we show that government delivery quality is significantly correlated with national happiness, but democratic quality is not. We also analyze other quality of government indicators. Confidence in government is correlated with happiness, however forms of democracy and government spending seem not. We further discuss three channels (including peace and conflict, trust, and inequality) whereby quality of government and happiness are linked. We finally summarize what has been learned about how government policies could be formed to improve citizens’ happiness.

Having read through the paper, I thought the main interesting result was that quality of service provision (effectiveness, rule of law, regulatory quality, and absence of corruption) is correlated with happiness whereas kind of democracy is not, with the latter democracy variable being an index related to voice, accountability, stability, and freedom from violence.

Of course it would be very interesting to rerun such a test during pandemic times.