The happiness gap in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Citizens in Eastern Europe are less satisfied with life than their peers in other countries. This happiness gap has persisted over time, despite predictions to the contrary by earlier scholars. It holds after controlling for a variety of covariates, such as the standard of living, life expectancy and Eastern Orthodox religion. Armed with a battery of surveys from the early 1990s to 2014, we argue that the happiness gap is explained by how citizens in post-communist countries perceive their governments. Eastern Europeans link their life satisfaction to higher perceived corruption and weaker government performance. Our results suggest that the transition from central planning is still incomplete, at least in the psychology of people.

The happiness gap between transition and non-transition countries

“…However, the impact of religion is controversial. Higher shares of the Eastern Orthodox religion are found to be correlated with weaker economic growth and with lower life satisfaction in country-level relationships [10].…”

“…Nevertheless, evidence for the FSU suggests the creation of a "legislation vacuum" during the first stage of reforms and a misinterpretation of democracy as doing whatever one wants, rather than what the law permits. Across many post-communist states during the 1990s, this gave rise to the accumulation of capital and the establishment of "new rules" by a group of high-level, ex-Communist Party functionaries and a growing cadre of elite individuals, who managed to accumulate wealth by circumventing the law [10].…”

“…Perceived lawlessness, corruption, bad governance, and low legitimacy of the new institutions are still the characteristics of some transition countries; yet these factors have an unclear impact on SWB in the post-communist region [7], [11]. Thus, the perception of corruption makes a difference for life satisfaction in inter-country comparisons, but not at the personal level, as individuals have personal views on the extent of bribery and corruption [10]. There is a belief in merit leading to success and good evaluation of governmental performance that makes individuals happier.…”

“…Russia, a huge drop in the sense of national self-esteem was observed [6]. A "spiritual vacuum" appeared, which led to the substitution of communist ideology by religious practices [10]. Religion has been shown to insure happiness against negative effects of reforms in transitional countries [12].…”

“…This however leads to the question of the comparability of the wording of SWB questions and the scaling of answers. Standardization of responses to make them comparable across countries may be sensitive to the proportion of happy and unhappy countries, and cultural differences, in the data sets [10].…”