Influences on happiness and subjective well-being of entrepreneurs and labour: Kwazulu-Natal case study

Abstract

Globally, individuals seek happiness, but not everybody is happy. Economic reasoning suggests that rising incomes with expansions in GDP enhance the quality of life and subjective well-being. This paper examines the influences on individual happiness, using ordinal logistic regression and chi-square analyses. Based on the findings of a small case study, the chi-square test indicated that a significant relationship exists between gender, education, ethnicity, children, marital status, employment relations, income and self-reported happiness. The study also found that, on average, happier people tended to be educated, married with children, and treated fairly at work. But having too many children produced a decrement in individual happiness. The ordinal regression results indicate that an individual’s education, gender, age distribution and work environment are influential in producing higher levels of happiness. Entrepreneurs were found to have a significantly higher mean level of happiness than employees. In the workplace, individuals who experienced personal growth and were able to contribute their ideas tended to be happier, relative to others who perceived themselves to be ‘restricted’.