Title: Urbanisation and life satisfaction

Authors: Marium Ishaque; Faisal Sultan Qadri

Addresses: Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, Pakistan ' Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, Pakistan

Abstract: The world is urbanising rapidly and the proportion of the population living in urban areas in both the developed and developing countries has increased over time. In this paper, we study the association between urbanisation and life satisfaction at national level by using different indicators of urbanisation. The study examines whether or not the urbanisation-well-being association varies when different measures of urbanisation are used. The analysis covers a wide range of regions across the world including the four income groups; low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high-income group. The data for empirical analysis is obtained from World Happiness Report 2020 and WDI (World Development Indicators 2019). The findings demonstrate that national level urbanisation raises national life satisfaction however, the benefits of urbanisation decrease with the development level. It is found that a change in urbanisation indicator may change the direction as well as statistical significance of the relationship.

Keywords: urbanisation; subjective well-being; life satisfaction; regions; urbanisation indicator; largest city; large agglomeration; happiness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHD.2022.124904

International Journal of Happiness and Development, 2022 Vol.7 No.2, pp.122 - 141

Received: 02 Apr 2021
Accepted: 10 Jun 2021
Published online: 15 Aug 2022 *

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