Happiness and God

Kayonda Hubert Ngamaba

Happiness and God

Social Policy and Social Work

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

Abstract

What makes people happy? Previous research suggests the “happy person” is young, healthy, well-educated, well-paid, optimistic and extroverted. The same research found the happiest people tend to be religious, married, with high self-esteem and job morale and modest aspirations. It seems your gender and level of intelligence don’t necessarily come into it. Our study looks at a large number of different religious groups across 100 countries – from 1981 to 2014 – using data from the World Value Survey. Our findings suggest that Protestants, Buddhists and Roman Catholics are happier and more satisfied with their lives, compared with other groups. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and the non-religious were in between, while Orthodox Christians were found to have the lowest happiness and life satisfaction rates. In our research, we found that many factors were positively associated with happiness and life satisfaction. These included being Protestant, female, married and younger (16 to 24 years old). The household’s financial situation also came into it, as did a person’s state of health and freedom of choice.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 12 Mar 2018

Keywords

happiness; life satisfaction; religion; religious differences; culture

Access to Document

https://www.independent.co.ug/happiness-and-god/

Cite this

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title = "Happiness and God",

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