Contextual Social Trust and Well-Being Inequality: From the Perspectives of Education and Income

Does Education Make People Happy? Spotlighting the Overlooked Societal Condition

“…One explanation of the aforementioned variance in evidence is the difference in research targets. In particular, it has been argued that the impact of education on happiness varies depending on such aspects as countries and cohorts (Akaeda, 2019). Indeed, for example, Cuñado (2012) concluded education directly contributed to higher levels of happiness in Spain, while Hu (2015) reported the distinctive contribution of education had declined over time in China.…”

“…In terms of other predictors, the current paper uses key variables that have proved to be significant determinants of SWB rather than relying on "usual suspects" (Bartram, 2021). This includes age and age squared, gender, marital status, the presence of child(ren), selfreported health status, main activity (occupations), and income (e.g., Aassve et al, 2012;Akaeda, 2019;Bartram, 2021;D'Ambrosio et al, 2020;Helliwell et al, 2020;Perelli-Harris et al, 2019;Steptoe et al, 2015;van der Meer, 2014). Indeed, Cuñado and de Gracia (2012) detected a substantial association between happiness and these attributes in their empirical analysis using the ESS data.…”

“…Although this contradictory view of the association between education and happiness is often explained as resulting from differences in research targets like countries and cohorts (Akaeda, 2019), one essential question has been inadequately explored: how does the link between education and SWB at the individual level vary in response to societal-level educational expansion? For the past few decades, social scientists have detected the diminishing power of educational attainment over socio-economic outcomes when considering its relative scarcity as positional goods.…”

Happiness Inequality in Post-Socialist Countries during Neoliberal Transition

“…The degradation of public health services due to the withdrawal of the state from the health sector has been one of the significant social costs of the neoliberal transition-one that has negatively affected people's well-being (Abbott and Wallace, 2007;Borisova, 2019, EBRD, 2018. Furthermore, the negative impact of capitalist transformations on social cohesion have resulted in a decline in generalized trust levels, and existing empirical evidence shows that social trust is positively associated with just distribution of SWB (Akaeda, 2020;Helliwell, Huang and Wang, 2016). In this context, we hypothesize that happiness inequality is associated with societal quality indicators such as health, social trust, and gender equality (Hypothesis 4).…”

Ending the Epidemic of Malaria in Nigeria Towards Attaining SDG Target 3.3.3: A Systematic Review of the Progress in Intervention Coverage

“…40 Akaeda (2019), using data from the European Quality of Life Survey, also finds that higher social trust (in his case using national averages for social trust) significantly reduces the effects on income on life evaluations. Akaeda assumes symmetric effects from top and bottom incomes, while we estimate the two effects separately and find them to be of roughly equivalent size.…”