TY - JOUR AU - Helliwell,John F. AU - Barrington-Leigh,Christopher P. AU - Harris,Anthony AU - Huang,Haifang TI - International Evidence on the Social Context of Well-Being JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 14720 PY - 2009 Y2 - February 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14720 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14720.pdf N1 - Author contact info: John F. Helliwell Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Department of Economics University of British Columbia 997-1873 East Mall Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1 CANADA Tel: 604/822-4953 Fax: 604/822-5915 E-Mail: john.helliwell@ubc.ca Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Department of Economics University of British Columbia 997 - 1873 East Mall Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1 CANADA E-Mail: cpbl@wellbeing.econ.ubc.ca Anthony Harris Nuffield College New Road Oxford OX1 1NF UK E-Mail: c.Anthony.p.Harris@gmail.com Haifang Huang Department of Economics University of Alberta 8-14 HM Tory Edmonton Alberta T6G 2H4 CANADA E-Mail: haifang.huang@ualberta.ca AB - This paper uses the first three waves of the Gallup World Poll to investigate differences across countries, cultures and regions in the factors linked to life satisfaction, paying special attention to the social context. Our principal findings are: First, using the larger pooled sample, we find that answers to the satisfaction with life and Cantril ladder questions provide consistent views of what constitutes a good life, with an average of the two measures providing a clearer picture than either measure on its own. Second, we find strong evidence for the importance of both income and social context variables in explaining within-country and international differences in well-being. For most specifications tested, the combined effects of a few measures of the social and institutional context are as large as those of income in explaining both international and intra-national differences in life satisfaction. Third, the very significant influences of both income and social factors permit the calculation of compensating differentials for social factors. We find very large income-equivalent values for key measures of the social context. Fourth, the international similarity of the estimated equations suggests that the large international differences in average life evaluations are not due to different approaches to the meaning of a good life, but to differing social, institutional, and economic life circumstances. ER -