The Determinants of Subjective Well-Being in a Developing Country: The Ecuadorian Case

Abstract

In this study, we identify some individual and contextual factors potentially affecting subjective well-being in developing countries and check their effect in the Ecuadorian case. Ecuador is an oil country where attempts have been made to overcome deep social and territorial inequalities by placing human well-being at the core of public policy through the National Plan for Good Living. By means of ordinary least squares and ordered logit with clustered standard errors, as well as multilevel ordered logit models, we find that oil-dependent territories negatively affect well-being. Moreover, women and indigenous people report lower well-being, while personal income, education, housing quality, institutional trust, health insurance and social relationships can improve it. From a policy perspective, we find that basic unmet needs still need to be fulfilled to increase well-being, and further improvements of the institutional framework, redistributive system and inclusion policies are required. In this respect, we observe that Good Living-based policy accurately addresses these elements and, therefore, has great potential for application in other countries with similar characteristics.

Blended system thinking approach to strengthen the education and training in university-industry research collaboration

“…Perfect ESS always consists of quality of scientific knowledge-producing organisations, quality of teaching and training organisations and quality of internship organisations that are valuable to enhance the output of R&D activities of UIRC (Bamfield 2013). Pontarollo, Orellana, and Segovia (2020) and Meek, Teichler, and Kearny (2009) elaborated that the standard of ESS in developing countries remains bleak, they require rapid changing where the research-based teaching and training practices can be developed. Similarly, Healey, Jenkins, and Lea (2014) and Bunatovich, Khidayevich, and Abdurakhmonovich (2020) delineated that ESS must have a research-based curriculum rather than a theory-based one; a theorybased curriculum only produced the graduates with theoretical knowledge, which is insufficient for the development of research and innovations.…”

Regional infrastructure effects on the life satisfaction of rural and urban residents. A case study for Ecuador

“…The results of the empty multilevel ordinal logistic model show that the heterogeneity of the self-reported life satisfaction is explained by between-canton variation in 7% (0.252/(0.252+3.29)), as in Pontarollo et al (2019). This means that individuals of the same canton tend to report a similar level of life satisfaction which could be explained by the availability of the same services and amenities that a given canton provides.…”

Happiness in the tropics: climate variables and subjective wellbeing

“…The magnitude of the effect of socio-economic characteristics and its statistical significance are consistent across different econometric specifications and with existing evidence from Ecuador (Pontarollo et al ., 2020). Additional controls include marital status and province and year fixed effects.…”