The Exploration of Subjective Well-being in the Context of Pakistan

This paper contributes to the literature on the subjective well-being (SWB) by providing empirical evidence regarding the correlates of SWB in the context of Pakistan. Instead of using single measure of life satisfaction or happiness to represent the level of SWB, a composite index with four different aspects; overall life satisfaction, happiness, financial satisfaction and subjective health status is developed for Pakistan using World Value Survey 2012 data. Differences in self-reported evaluation of current well-being are statistically explored through socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics of respondents. The statistical exercise reveals that law and order situation or feeling ofinsecurity in neighborhood is the most significant factor which is impacting SWB with large negative marginal effect.Similarly, variables representing vulnerability to poverty and security are also statistically significant with an inverse relation with SWB. In contrast, the results reveal that religiosity plays a positive and significant role in explaining differences in SWB. Nonetheless, the marginal positive impact of religiosity is much less than the negative impacting factors.