How’s life?

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18 november 2013 | ‘Wellbeing’ is the newest research topic of OECD-researchers. Especially in Portugal, Korea, Greece and Hungary low levels of education are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction. And - of course - Latin Americans have more fun.

A recent OECD-study gives a diagnosis of countries’ wellbeing en relates this information with other criteria like education level. Across OECD countries, the gap between countries with the highest and lowest life satisfaction is approximately 3 points on an 11 points scale.

“People in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands report the highest levels of life satisfaction. By way of contract people of Hungary, Portugal and Greece report the lowest levels of life satisfaction. On average in the OECD-area, people report a life satisfaction of 6.2.”

East Asian countries (e.g. Japan and South Korea) tend to report a lower level of life satisfaction than might otherwise be expected given their economic development while Latin American countries (e.g. Chile, Brazil, and Mexico) show the opposite effect: more life satisfaction where on the basis of economic data this would not be expected.