Democracy does cause happiness
Date
2025-11
Authors
Loriente, Martín Iñaki
relationships.isContributorOfPublication
Aksoy, Cevat Giray
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía
Abstract
This paper provides causal evidence that democracy enhances individual well-being. Drawing on harmonized microdata from more than 100 countries and exploiting variation across birth cohorts and survey waves, we show that greater exposure to democratic institutions leads people to report higher income, better health, more personal autonomy, higher life satisfaction, and greater subjective happiness. Building on recent literature that documents the effect of democratic transitions on economic growth, we shift the focus from national aggregates to individual-level outcomes to examine how democracy shapes personal welfare. The effects remain robust across alternative model specifications, clustering approaches, estimation strategies, and subsamples, and a wide set of additional checks. The temporal dynamics further support our interpretation, as exposure during impressionable years plays a critical role. Mechanism analyses indicate that institutional performance is central: countries with stronger economic performance, greater transparency, better state capacity, and more redistribution exhibit substantially larger effects, typically between 1.5 and 3 times those observed in lower-performing democracies.
Description
Fil: Loriente, Martín Iñaki. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina.