Determinants of Happiness

Applied Research Project and Report

Applications for Economics & Management

Course 6064

THE DETERMINANTS OF HAPPINESS

( Word Count: XXXX)

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I. SUMMARY

It is the purpose of our research project to examine the determinants and influences of happiness. In order to prove our hypothesis that the level of happiness is mainly affected by the four major factors of family, health, job, and religion, we selected a range of indicator variables from the European Social Survey that we believed would model the influences above. Data screening, however, led to the situation that a significant fraction of our indicator variables describing the influence of job & work did not prove appropriate for factor analysis. As a result, we ended up with three latent factors indicating the determinants of family, health, and religion. These three factors were then implemented in a regression analysis in order to determine their impact on the level of happiness. In the end, our factors were complemented by the remaining independent variables to gain a broader picture and more solid results.

Concerning the results of our research, we can state that age turned out to be insignificant in the determination of happiness while family and religion only showed little correlation with our dependent variable. This is...