Democracy and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from Updated Global Data

Empirical studies to date on the political and institutional determinants of life satisfaction have been constrained by country sample size and timeframe. The Gallup World Poll now provides extensive coverage of countries and a long enough timeframe to allow for meaningful within-country evaluations as democratic performance ebbs and flows over time. Using these updated data, the analysis reveals that common measures of level of democracy focused on political rights and competitive elections appear unrelated to life satisfaction with a worldwide sample. Breaking down the quality of democracy into process and delivery using the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators also reveals no relationship. However, when the six indicators are tested individually, higher levels of government effectiveness in particular are related to more positive life evaluations using two-way fixed effects models and a variety of robustness checks. These findings provide additional understanding about the relationship between democratic performance and life satisfaction around the world.