Arbeitspapier
Happy Voters
Motivated by recent interest and initiatives taken by several governments and international organizations to come up with indicators of well-being to inform policy makers, we test if subjective well-being measures (SWB) can be employed to study voting behaviour. Controlling for financial and economic circumstances, we find that when citizens are more satisfied with their life, they are also more likely to cast their vote in favor of the ruling party. We address the possible concern of reverse causality in the relationship between SWB and political support by (i) analysing the political behaviour of a sample of ideologically neutral voters, and (ii) by identifying the effect of SWB on voting intentions in individuals' response to an exogenous shock of (un)happiness (i.e. the death of husband or wife). We conclude that SWB explains voting decisions, even when the event affecting well-being is beyond government's control.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 5002
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Structure and Scope of Government: General
Welfare Economics: General
Microeconomics: General
Household Behavior: General
- Subject
-
subjective well-being
happiness
retrospective voting
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Liberini, Federica
Redoano, Michela
Proto, Eugenio
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
- (where)
-
Munich
- (when)
-
2014
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Liberini, Federica
- Redoano, Michela
- Proto, Eugenio
- Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
Time of origin
- 2014
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