Can Money Buy Happiness? Multilevel Analysis of Individual Income, Regional Income, and Happiness
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Lin, Chih-Lun
Abstract
This study aims to examine the relation of individual and regional income to happiness by multilevel modelling. People always pursue happiness, and happiness is a significant indicator to measure quality of life. Above all factors of happiness, income plays an important role in daily life and academic research. Many scholars suggested that not only a person’s income affects one’s happiness, but also others’ income dose. Thus, individual income, other people’s average income in regional level, and other people’s average income in neighboring regional level are all key factors of happiness. However, there is still a lack of multilevel analysis of income at different levels in relation to happiness. It will neglect the characteristics of nested data, ignoring important variables, and fail to notice the relationships across spatial scales. Using 2010 Taiwan Social Change Survey (Round 6, Year 1), this study attempts to explore the relationships between individual income, regional income, and happiness by hierarchical generalized linear models (HGLM). The result shows that in Taiwan, one’s own money does buy happiness. Moreover, the geography of happiness does matter. Taiwanese tend to be happier when they reside in poorer township, as well as in richer neighboring township.
Subjects
Happiness
Individual Income
Regional Income
Multilevel Modelling
Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models (HGLM)
Taiwan Social Change Survey
Type
thesis
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