Inequality of happiness in countries of the world-analysis of factors that determine happiness

Happiness has been constantly discussed because it is the highest goal that human beings want to reach throughout life, subjects such as what happiness is, whether it actually exists, whether it is determinative of human behaviors, how it can be obtained, why people want to be happy and what factors determine happiness. Happiness is part of a wide range of research on individual well-being, such as life conditions, economic, socio-demographic and institutional factors as well as genetic factors. In this direction, it was aimed to determine the effect of economic and socio-demographic factors on reported happiness level. World Happiness Report survey data of the years 2016 and 2010 conducted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Network was used in the study, the level of happiness reported as a dependent variable and logarithm of GDP per capita, healty life expectancy at birth, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceptions of corruption, positive affect, negative affect, confidence in national government, unemployment rate and inflation rate were used as a explanatory variables. Three separate models for the years 2010 and 2016 were determined in two separate samples covering all the countries of the world. As a method of analysis, it was preferred Ordered Logistic Regression analysis which was frequently used in the recent periods when the dependent variable was in qualitative and sequential scale. According to the findings, high income alone was not enough to make people happy, it was necessary to analyze other socio-demographic and institutional variables as well as income.