Reversing the gender gap in happiness

Abstract

Life satisfaction surveys are increasingly being used as a measure of welfare (Stiglitz et al., 2009), and even proposed as a primary measure (Layard, 2005). On average worldwide, surveys consistently find that women report higher life satisfaction than men. Yet, women are worse off in many ways: less education, lower incomes, worse self-reported health, and fewer opportunities. Why do they report higher life satisfaction? Using Gallup World Poll survey data from 102 countries including anchoring vignettes, I show that the gap is consistent with women and men systematically using different response scales, and that once these scales have been normalized, women appear less happy than men on average. I find that the effects of other characteristics commonly studied (income, education, marital status, etc.) are at least directionally the same after vignette adjustment, reinforcing previous findings.