The impact of varieties of democracy on subjective well-being: Global evidence

This paper investigates the effect of democracy on subjective well-being (SWB) using panel data from 144 countries from 2005 to 2020. SWB measures the evaluation of life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions. In addition, democracy is conceived as a multidimensional concept, making this study utilise five different democracy indices. Addressing potential issues of endogeneity with the Lewbel two-stage least squares, our findings revealed that high-level democracy indices, such as liberal, participatory, egalitarian, electoral, and deliberative democracy enhance life satisfaction and positive emotions, while only liberal democracy significantly reduces negative emotions. The results also show that democracy improves SWB by enhancing freedom to make life choices. The findings also yield that social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, GDP per capita, and life expectancy improve SWB and positive emotions. At the same time, perceptions of corruption and income inequality deteriorate SWB. These findings are robust to alternative econometric techniques and model specifications. The paper offers important policy implications for enhancing SWB and positive psychology.