Regional happiness economics in Turkey

Happiness is important for every one. Researches show happy individuals are more successful in their career and they earn much more. However, the source of happiness has been a matter of debate for philosophers for many centuries. Primarily considered psychologically and sociologically, the concept of happiness later became a center of attraction for economists in that there was a parallelism between happiness and better standards of living. In neo-classical economics, absolute income-based happiness has been a matter of severe criticism. With the introduction of behavioral economics, the focus on the mathematical aspect of eonomics has evolved into some psychological factors as well. As a subbranch of behavioral economics, happiness economics attaches importance to several other variables than some certain objective variables in measuring living satisfaction of an individual or a country. The present research, a survey has been used for Turkey's distribution of happiness and variables that are effective in this distribution. The collected data has been analyzed with the chi square test and ordered probit model. The results show individuals' positive state of health, presence of religion in their lives, positive financial expectations for the next year and confidence in the President of the Republic have positive effects on their perception of happiness while the confidence in government and army are negatively effective. On the other hand, good state of health and working in public sector affect the perception of happiness positively whereas working in private sector as qualified personnel affect it negatively. Key Words: Happiness Economics, Living Satisfaction, Behavioral Economics, Ordered Probit