Democracy, economy and happiness in post-Soviet States (1995-2014)

Abstract

Defining and measuring happiness has been a major topic for many generations of scholars. The contemporary discussion tackles upon the main predictors of happiness and their influence on the subject. This paper focuses on the influence of democracy and economy towards happiness, using the fifteen post- Soviet countries as cases. The data for the research has been collected from 1995 to 2014 and has been analyzed both on aggregate and individual level. The results show that on individual level both the economic status and the satisfaction with democracy have significant influence towards happiness. However, on aggregate level the income inequality appears to be the only predictor of happiness in both cases where the democracy factor is controlled for or not.