World: Population vs Happiness, Satisfaction with Life

Will the population of a country has any correlation with the subjective feeling like happiness or satisfaction of life? Apparently from the graphs below, the answer is yes.

a) Population vs “How happy are you?” among OECD countries, year 2002-2004:

Rsquare=0.396 (moderately strong and negative correlation) at p=0.0017.

b) Population vs “% of people say ‘very happy'” among selected world countries:

Rsquare=0.173 (weak negative correlation) at p=0.013.

c) Population vs “satisfaction with life” among selected world countries:

Rsquare=0.332 (moderately strong negative correlation) at p=0.0002.

However, it is also noted that as shown earlier in previous post, the GDP per capita decrease along with increment of population (log 10) while Gini increase with population. So the relationship will probably go along the line such as: high population -> lower GDP pe capita/high Gini -> lower happiness score/life satisfaction score.

Note: Symbol and colours used in graph

“+” is Iceland, “x” is US
Red: GDP<$15 000
Black: $15 000 < GDP < $25 000
Blue: GDP > $25 000

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