Did George W. Bush increase the happiness of US Republicans?

Abstract

Using information from the US General Social Survey (GSS) between 1972 and 2006, we examine the effects of political affiliation on happiness. Regression results show that Republicans are always happier than Democrats, but members of both parties tend to be happier during a Democratic presidential administration. We do not find compelling evidence that Americans are happier when their own political party is in power.

Notes

¹We focus our analysis on individuals who indicated they are Republicans (‘Strong Republican’, ‘Not very strong Republican’ or ‘Independent, close to Republican’) or Democrats (‘Strong Democrat’, ‘Not very strong Democrat’ or ‘Independent, close to Democrat’). Respondents who selected another political affiliation were removed from the sample.

²For the dummy variables included in the model, the marginal effects are interpreted as the change in the probability of being ‘very happy’ as the value increases from a zero to a 1.0.

³Marginal effects related to the ‘pretty happy’ and ‘not too happy’ response categories are available from the authors upon request.

⁴Marginal effects related to the other control variables suggest that the socio-economic characteristics included in the model generally have an impact on happiness.