The effects of Income on happiness among Asian countries: societal values matter?
2016/06/21
研討會日期 : 2016-06-21
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Hock-Eam Lim
主持人 : Professor Daigee Shaw
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Lim received his Ph.D. in Economics at Monash University, Clayton Campus, Melbourne, Australia in 2008. He is currently an Associate Professor at School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia. His research fields are Econometrics, Labor Economics, and Development Economics.
演講摘要 : During the last two decades, economic studies on happiness have grown rapidly, in particular, studies on the effect of income on happiness. Ng (2002) has highlighted the East-Asian happiness gap: the East Asian countries, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, are performing well economically, however, poorly in happiness. Using the World Values Survey data, this paper aims to estimate the effect of income on happiness among the Asian countries and examine the intervening effect of society values. Results of descriptive statistics reveal that Thailand and Philippine are the happiest countries; whereas the South Korea and India are the least happy. In terms of the effect of income on happiness, it is insignificant in Thailand and Philippine and the highest in South Korea and Taiwan. The effect of income on happiness becomes insignificant once it is intervened by the societal values. Thus, the societal values are the main drivers of differential income effects among the Asian countries.
