UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE HAPPINESS OF VIETNAMESE: MICRO-ANALYSIS OF HAPPINESS DETERMINANTS IN THE CASE OF BINH DINH PROVINCE A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By HO DAI NGHIA Academic Supervisor: Dr. TRAN ANH TUAN HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2013 i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Acknowledgements During the time of studying in Vietnam – Netherlands programme for Master of Arts in Developing Economics, I have learned so much helpful knowledge. Therefore, I would like to thank to Programme and all the teachers that have taught me in this time. I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my research supervisors, Dr.
Anh Tuan, for his patient guidance, industrious encouragement and fruitful critiques of this research work. Besides my supervisor, I want to acknowledge the tremendous support that I received from Dr. Pham Khanh Nam and Prof. Nguyen Trong Hoai for giving me constructive comments and warm encouragement.
I would like to offer my special thanks to many friends at People's Committee of Binh Dinh for your assistance and helpful advice with the eye glance data reduction process. Without your guidance and persistent help this thesis would not have been possible. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given by the officer of my university’s library for his help in offering me the resources in researching and performing the program. Lastly, the most special thanks go to my best partner and friend, my father, for his help in collecting the data analysis and other helpful things.
My gratitude also goes to my mother. She gave me your unconditional support through all this long process. ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Abstract Although economic growth is higher in many countries, these nations still have no increase or even suffering a depression in average national happiness. This study has carefully examined the determinants of happiness or subject well- being from literature.
These determinants are divided into three main categories: economic determinants, personal and demographic determinants and, finally, social determinants. In addition to, some recent evidence reveal that happiness also has the adverse significant effect on these factors and economic growth only has restricted effects on happiness level of particular nations. In specific case, based on 300 observations and ONS approach, this research paper desires to estimate the magnitude of determinants of happiness in Binh Dinh province at individual level. The results reveal that the mental, physical health, local facilities satisfaction and household income have strong effects on individual’s happiness level with high statistical significance.
Furthermore, the size of coefficients other several variables, including being a female, having partner, high qualification, owned-house status, being employed or living in city is small and ambiguous. It means that they have weak relationships with the happiness level. Specifically, two variables of age and be employed, have opposed sign as literature. Keywords: Subject well-being, Happiness, Economic Growth, Life Satisfaction, Determinants, Binh Dinh Province.
iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of Contents Acknowledgements. iii List of Tables. vi List of Figures. 1 Chapter One: Literature Review.
Well-being concept. Object and subject well-being. Three dimensions theory. Determinants of Happiness .1 Happiness and Income .2 Happiness and Unemployment .3 Happiness and Inequality.4 Happiness and Demographic Determinants.
Happiness and Social Determinants. 31 Chapter two: Socio-economic Overview of Binh Dinh province. Overview of Economics factors. Contribution to happiness at glance .3 Some remained obstructions .37 Chapter Three: Methodology and Data.2 The questionnaire design- ONS approach .46 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
The research detail function. The description of variables use in this research. 49 Chapter 4: Analysis result. The empirical analysis.
Education and health determinants. Economic and work determinants. Social life and community relationships determinants. 59 Chapter 5: Conclusion and ruture research directions.
Conclusion and Recommendation. Limitation and future research directions. 73 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com List of Tables Table 1-The description of variables use in the thesis Table 2 - Literature findings on determinants affecting happiness level Table 3- Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey test result Table 4- WLS and OLS analysis result Table 5- Coefficients sign comparison vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com List of Figures Figure 1- Three dimensions of well-being Figure 2- Conceptual framework Figure 3- GDP per capita and happiness across regions Figure 4- Happiness and Income in USA Figure 5- Happiness and Income in Japan Figure 6- Happiness and Income per Capita across Countries Figure 7- Labor market status and Average subjective well-being ratings Figure 8- Unemployment status and Average subjective well-being ratings Figure 9- Marriage status and Average life satisfaction ratings Figure 10- Average life satisfaction ratings of the number of children between different gender respondents. Figure 11- Average Happiness and Age through a life cycle Figure 12- Gender and Average subjective well-being ratings vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Abbreviations APS: Annual Population Survey ATUS: Annual Time-Use Survey BHPS: British Household Panel Survey BSPS: British Society for the Philosophy of Science DEFRA: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs DHS: Dutch Household Survey ECHP: European Community Household Panel EMA: Ecological Momentary Assessment ESM: Experience Sampling Method ESS: European Social Survey ERD: Responsible Development Environment FSU: Former Soviet Union GDP: Gross Domestic Product GNH: General National Happiness GNP: Gross National Product GSS: General Social Survey HIV/AIDS: Human Immunodeficiency Virus/ Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Hukou: Household Registration Identity IHS: Institute of Human Studies NEF: New Economic Foundation NEW: Net Economic Benefits viii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ONS: Office for National Statistics PANAS: Positive and Negative Affect Scale UK: United Kingdom SWB: Subject well-being WVS: World Values Survey WEF World Economic Forum ix TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Introduction In recent years, a European debt crisis as well as the global economic crisis has set for us the question: Whether the targets which countries following are appropriate? And was it time the world needs a new goal? The world economy has long been using the concept of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the standard to evaluate the prosperity of a country.
This standard often does not include the costs to achieve progress society and the environment. While the rest of the world is playing with the global recession storm, there is a small Buddhist nation that situate on the top of steep Himalayan snow for thousand years and that has boldly claimed to have found the solution for the question the true happiness in where and the objective a nation should pursue? Bhutan Government initiates to uses the standard "General National Happiness" (GNH) with GDP as the standard to evaluate the prosperity of each country. The nations of the world should probably learn to imitate wings of Bhutan to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy agenda on the basis that it brings happiness to the people rather than the economic growth figures for insensitivity. Gross National Happiness value (Gross National Happiness - GNH) was born from the ideas of former King of Bhutan, Sir Wangchuck (Alejandro, 2009), is applied from the 1970s to replace the concept of Gross national product (GNP).
He did not hesitate to say "no" before the globalization efforts of the West with his famous phrase: "The total national happiness (GNH) is more important than gross national product (GDP)". As a small country in the Himalayas with about 708,427 people and is one of the poorest countries. However, based on GNH, Bhutan's GNH probably is the top in the world. Kinley Dorji (1972), secretary of contact information for Bhutan: "Just look at the indicators of economic growth will lead to where they know," he said, referring to the economic downturn worldwide.
"The 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com industrialized countries must have realized now that GNP is a broken promise alone. In addition to Bhutan, this criterion has much more paid national attention in some other countries. Costa Rica strongly supports to the "responsible development environment” (ERD), while the United Kingdom proposed for "welfare state". In contrary, as the Bhutan’s neighbor- China is a notable opposite.
After two decades of economic growth in an extraordinary way, the Chinese are not significantly happier than ever before, according to a study evaluating the level of happiness and national income in the economy's fastest growing world. Looking at the overview, the rich in China is little happier than before, but those with the average income level the degree of happiness does not seem to change anything. As for the poor, the satisfaction level of life seems to drop significantly. These trends are not grounds for criticizing the capitalist economy, or economic growth - but they were somewhat suggests that the conventional economic criteria are not strong sufficient enough to measure happiness evaluation.
Easterlin (1974), an economist from the University of Southern California, became famous after his paper published in 1974 which confirms that money can help people happier, but only to a certain extent. After you satisfy certain basic needs, the degree of satisfaction with life will increase with decreasing income. Known as Easterlin paradox, this issue is a compelling illustration for the application of scientific methods to solve the question of sociology and economics. Binh Dinh province is similar to the most of other locations of Vietnam.
It usually uses GDP or GNP as the ultimate target to pursuit. Moreover, as tracking this goal, Binh Dinh could devote numerous valuable things and can be easily involved into World economy crisis. For instance, when the World economic crisis in 2007 blooms, the Binh Dinh province economy has suffered a severe consequence with the significant decrease in the economic growth rate, substantially contracting in Bank credit ability, negative effects on import- export activities…. (Annual 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com economic report of People's Committee of Binh Dinh Province, 2008).
This consequence, straightforward state, is strongly correlated with flaws in the GDP indicator as an appropriate measure of human’s well-being. This research going to provide some guides for future choices of policy-makers to help them performing the best policies in order to improving society’s well-being in general. Moreover, it also introduces a new perception of “progression” and helps us do not fall into the “economic development trap” like China are suffering. The major objective of this study is to investigate the happiness from the knowledge which pieced out from the newest achievement of literature, the common determinants and the suitable measure of happiness as well as reveals the result as estimate determinants of happiness in Binh Dinh province.
This study tries to answer the main questions: What are the determinants of happiness in Binh Dinh Province? The research presents reviews of economic theories that directly relate to the research topics then make clear two problems: + What are determinants of happiness and the relationship between economic growth and happiness? + What is the suitable approach to evaluate happiness and limitation on the use of happiness indicators? Finally, this study also assesses some relevant determinants affecting to happiness then answer the main question. In this research, the expectation of these determinants has significant effect to the certain level of happiness of Binh Dinh province. This paper outline consists of five chapters; after introduction is literature review section generally, the next is to review the happiness, subjects of well-being concepts and determinants of happiness. Third section exhibits sources of data and 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com methodology using in paper.
The next section reveals empirical result and carries out explanation on this result. As a conclusion, final section comments upon the result then give important implication on practice. 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Chapter One Literature Review The concept of subject well-being or happiness is a social science notation.