Leisure beliefs and the subjective well-being of nations

ABSTRACT

The policies of most governments focus on improving material prosperity. Yet, wealth only weakly predicts well-being. It is therefore important to understand whether factors other than money shape the happiness of nations. Here, we construct a data set of 79 countries (N = 220,000) and explore whether differences in the prioritization of time (leisure) vs. money (work) explain cross-country differences in happiness. Consistent with our predictions, countries whose citizens value leisure more than work report higher subjective well-being at the country and individual level. These effects hold in high and low GDP countries. Critically, we find evidence for a novel mechanism: people who value leisure over work are less negatively impacted by financial instability. Moving beyond individual welfare, the value that nations place on leisure vs. work fundamentally shapes happiness.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure
• work
• happiness
• subjective well-being
• public policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Including the lagged measure of the log of GDP per capita (i.e., a country’s national income) allows us to reduce the effects of reverse causality: Although current subjective well-being may contribute to a country’s GDP per capita, current subjective well-being cannot contribute to past levels of GDP per capita. Wave and country fixed effects allow us to account for other cultural and political factors that take place in specific years and countries that might not be captured by other control variables.