The Impact of Culture on Well-Being: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Gábor Hajdu*, Tamás Hajdu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This paper examines the effect of culture on subjective well-being. By exploiting the natural experiment of migration we are able to separate the effect of culture (intrinsic cultural disposition, values, beliefs, norms) from other extrinsic institutional, economic and social factors. Using data from five rounds of the European Social Survey we find that holding constant the external environment (living in the same residence country) and controlling for the important socio-demographic attributes, immigrants from countries with high levels of life satisfaction report higher life satisfaction than immigrants from countries with low levels of life satisfaction. The effect of satisfaction in the birth country lasts across generations and is stronger for immigrants who are more attached to the culture of their birth country. Since any observed differences among the immigrants is their cultural background (their birth countries), the results can be interpreted as the effect of culture on life satisfaction. Our results suggest that besides economic and social variables, institutions and personal characteristics, cultural factors play an important role in satisfaction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1089-1110
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of Happiness Studies
Volume17
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Beliefs
  • Culture
  • European Social Survey
  • International comparison
  • Life satisfaction
  • Subjective well-being
  • Values

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