Happiness may seem to be in short supply in Ireland at the moment. But in general when Irish people are asked to ranked their happiness on a scale of 0-10 we average close to 8. Many predictors have been studied. Given the forthcoming election it is interesting to know if happiness differs according to how people vote. The European Social Survey asked people how they voted. Only one party is recorded so it is presumably their first choice.Graphing happiness by party shows that Fianna Fail voters are the happiest of the lot followed by Fine Gael. Sinn Fein voters are the most miserable of the lot. These differences are statistically significant & are robust to controlling for age, sex and education. Of course this data was not collected recently and a contemporary survey might show a different pattern.
4 comments:
In general, centre-right wing voters tend to be happier. Republicans are happier than Democrats for example.
Isn't that gas? Why would that be Ted?
Would it not depend on who the government or is that the left attracts the disgruntled?
Ill post on this at some stage. I think it is fair enough to say that people who are more comfortable psychologically (even controlling for income) tend to be more supportive of conservative governments. Though, you are right that it depends on who is in power etc., One of the best papers on partisan social welfare functions using well-being data is the one below. You will like this paper:
http://bit.ly/hStz2y
Looks a very interesting paper
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