A Global Examination of the Relationship Between Corruption and Well-Being and Happiness

Abstract

Well-being and happiness are without question important to governmental leaders, policy makers, and citizens throughout the world. It would thus be expected that all of them would want to work tirelessly to create systems and processes through public policy and other activities that would promote well-being and happiness. But despite attempts across the globe to achieve this outcome, there is a great deal of evidence of the existence of a number of obstacles to reaching it. This paper focuses on one of the major obstacles by examining the relationship between corruption and factors suggested in the literature as being indicative of both individual and national well-being and happiness. While for many years, well-being and happiness has been closely linked to factors that are economic in nature, this study also identifies and includes additional political and social factors as found in more recent literature on democracy and good governance. Specifically, these factors include various indicators of democracy, educational indicators, and indicators associated with physical health. The underlying question addressed in this study is how closely perceived levels of corruption are related to a variety of political, economic, and social factors as observed through several indexes used to measure well-being and happiness. The importance of the research is that it provides a global examination of the relationship between corruption and these factors using current data and justifies future research into the nature of that relationship and its implications for addressing corruption in the future in order to increase opportunity for increased well-being and happiness among a large proportion of the world’s population who do not enjoy it at the present time.