Hypertension and happiness across nations

From Blanchflower & Oswald 'Journal of Health Economics' '08

Data from the ESS, Eurotrends, and Eurobarometer are used to test the relationship between well-being and reported hypertension:

In surveys of well-being, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands emerge as particularly happy while nations like Germany and Italy report lower levels of happiness. But are these kinds of findings credible? This paper provides some evidence that the answer is yes. Using data on 16 countries, it shows that happier nations report systematically lower levels of hypertension. As well as potentially validating the differences in measured happiness across nations, this suggests that blood-pressure readings might be valuable as part of a national well-being index. A new ranking of European nations’ GHQ-N6 mental health scores is also given.