happiness averages (means) for the countries in our sample, ordered from highest to lowest
value.
Table 2: Happiness across countries
|
Austria |
Czech |
Slovak |
Slovenia |
Hungary |
Poland |
Romania |
Bulgaria | |
|
Mean |
2.72 |
2.54 |
2.44 |
2.32 |
2.12 |
2.06 |
2.02 |
1.91 |
|
%SM |
86 |
77 |
72 |
66 |
56 |
53 |
51 |
46 |
Notes : Mean is the arithmetic mean of answers. SM % is the percentage of scale maximum.
Austrians report the highest life-satisfaction, followed by Czechs and Slovaks. The lowest
average levels of satisfaction can be found in Romania and Bulgaria.
One way of comparing country averages across different studies with differences in the scale
of the life satisfaction variable is via the percentage of scale maximum (%SM).3 Cummins
(2000, 136f) argues that for Western societies a representative value is 75 %SM, with a
standard deviation of 2.5% SM. From Table 2 we can infer that life satisfaction in Austria is
significantly above the typical values for Western countries at a 5% level (two standard
deviations). The Czech and Slovak Republics have reached values that are not statistically
different from the percentage of scale maximum typically found in Western countries.
However, all other Eastern European countries in our sample show %SMs that are
significantly below this reference value.
Hence, our broader sample of countries supports Blanchflower and Freeman’s (1997) finding
that life-satisfaction is lower in Eastern Europe than in the West. Given the differences in
social and economic conditions at the beginning of political and economic transition with
uncertain outcomes in Eastern Europe, this result is not entirely surprising.
At this stage, we cannot be sure whether these variations in national happiness are due to
specific national conditions or just reflect a specific influence of individual-level variables.
For instance, in the literature on life-satisfaction we tend to find that better educated
respondents appear to be happier. Now, if a particular country has a relatively higher share of
better educated, we would expect that the average happiness level for this country will be
higher. Hence, it is instructive to see whether these variations in average levels, interpreted as
differences in national happiness, remain after controlling for individual-level effects.
3 The %SM is computed as (Likert score - 1) / (Number of points on Likert scale -1)*100.