Accordingly, the concept of “happiness” has been defined as “the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his/her own life‐as‐a‐whole favorably” (Veenhoven, 1984, Chapter 2). Public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest level for a decade despite Theresa May’s £20.5bn-a-year funding boost and the enthusiasm created by the service’s 70th birthday.. The common sample we use in this paper comprises in total 25,244 respondents from 10 developing MENA economies, including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian territories, Syria, Tunisia, and the Republic of Yemen. But in the 1990s and 2000s, fiscal pressures increased, reflecting disappointing growth in the 1980s and growing recurrent expenditures, especially on public wages and subsidies. Along with a deep and flourishing inner life … They keep questioning things, asking themselves how things could be better or more meaningful. Body dissatisfaction develops when people have negative thoughts about their own body image. The answer to this question is recorded as zero for those who are satisfied and one for those who are dissatisfied with their freedom to make choices. The First World War and its aftermath readied the ground for the rise of the Bolshevik, Fascist and Nazi movements. where ε is the vector of residuals from the “first‐stage regression” equation (2b) of each endogenous regressor on all exogenous regressors, including a constant vector. However, obtaining internal consistency and reliability only happens when respondents actually use the whole range of available options (Diener, 2006). From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the direction and strength of the associations between the symptoms of the broken social contract and life dissatisfaction in MENA countries in the years immediately preceding the Arab Spring uprisings (2009–10). Evidence from the World Happiness Report (2010, p. 16) shows that trust as measured by whether people have someone to count on declined in MENA and perceptions of corruption and the freedom to make life choices also deteriorated, in contrast to improvements in other regions (e.g. Enter your email address below and we will send you your username, If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username. After independence, natural resource rents enabled many Arab governments to finance redistributive policies without imposing a heavy tax burden on citizens. This question should be addressed in future research. That is Dukkha. Edgar Mitchell From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. Corruption and cronyism flourished in developing MENA with detrimental effects not only on aggregate economic growth, but also on people’s subjective well‐being (Ott, 2010). Individual anxiety over rising costs of food or shelter can trigger unhappiness and, in some cases, riots (Lagi, Bertrand, and Bar‐Yam, 2011). In the restricted sample, 0.27 percent of the respondents did not respond to the life evaluation question, while a small percentage of the respondents were dropped from the sample because they did not respond to question on satisfaction with living standards (0.55 percent), satisfaction with efforts of the government to increase the number of available quality jobs (1.61 percent), cronyism (2.16 percent), freedom in life (1.79 percent), presence of corruption in government (9.10 percent)1818 Non‐respondents were further examined but were not found to have significant differences in life evaluation compared to respondents. The Gallup World Poll constitutes an almost exclusive source of information supplied by individuals to inform on several aspects of their life, including how satisfied they are with their life as a whole and how satisfied they are with different domains of their life. Public sector jobs often offer higher wages and more job security than private sector jobs as well as generous social security coverage (Bodor et al., 2008). In the literature, the negative association between happiness and unemployment is well‐established and can be explained by a combination of income loss and psychic costs related to psychological distress and loss of identity and self‐respect (Veenhoven, 1989; Gallie and Russel, 1998). Do Governance Factors Matter for Happiness in the MENA Region? Similarly, Morocco’s score decreased from 4.7 to 3.4 during the same period. Huxley wrote that the focus of Brave New World isn't science itself, but science as it affects people. Naming a thing is an indication that the thing so named is set. This finding is in line with the view that the “autocratic bargain” has weakened the direct link between authoritarianism (for example, lack of freedom) and life satisfaction. This section explores the degree to which each of these factors has contributed to the change in life satisfaction in the period 2009‐10, immediately preceding the Arab Spring, using a procedure known as the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition (Blinder, By continuing to browse this site, you agree to its use of cookies as described in our, I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of Use, The ‘Unhappy Development’ Paradox in Developing Arab Countries, Major Factors Behind Life Dissatisfaction in Developing MENA Countries, Sample Statistics on Life Satisfaction in Developing MENA Countries, Determinants of Life Satisfaction in MENA: Weighted Least Squares Estimates, Determinants of Life Satisfaction in MENA: Lewbel Estimates, Reasons for the Arab Spring according to the People in Developing MENA, Key Characteristics of Employment Regulation in the Middle East and North Africa, A Comparative Analysis of Subsidy Reforms in the Middle East and North Africa Region, Financial Distress and Happiness of Employees in Times of Economic Crisis, A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950–2010, Why has Happiness Inequality Increased? which did not generate enough formal jobs (Ianchovichina, 2018). Options to Bridge the Gap between Economic Theory and Policy Analysis, Trust, Voice, and Incentives: Learning from Local Success Stories in Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa, The China Puzzle: Falling Happiness in a Rising Economy, The ‘Arab Spring’ Stress Test: Diagnosing Reasons for Revolt, The ‘Technology of Happiness’ and the Tradition of Economic Science, The Political Economy of the Arab Uprisings, Why was the Arab World Poised for Revolution? The underemployed are respondents who are employed part‐time, but who would like to work full‐time, while the unemployed respondents are not employed at all and are looking for job opportunities. In the first model specification (1), we have LS as a dependent variable regressed only on control variables for personal characteristics. The word “happiness” is used in various ways (Veenhoven, 2012). The rest of the paper tests these hypotheses, the relative importance of different grievances for life satisfaction and its decline during the period immediately preceding the Arab Spring. A look at the universal conditions for happiness, as presented in cross‐country studies focusing on life satisfaction, provides limited understanding of the factors behind the low levels of life satisfaction in the Arab world. In this context, our study highlights that not only objective conditions count, but also the subjective awareness of shortcomings in these objective conditions. Although the usage of conventional instrumental variable (IV) methods would be preferred in a cross‐section setting, finding credible instruments X which are present in Y. The vision Huxley paints of a high-tech, futuristic society is both horrifying and fascinating. Perceptions of inequality of opportunities (or “wasta”) due to corruption and nepotism are significantly and negatively associated with life satisfaction in developing MENA (models 5, 6, and 7, Table 2). Rep, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, and Yemen, Rep. Libya is an Arab Spring country but it is not in this sample due to missing data. Inflation stemming from increases in food and energy prices put a strain on households as they spent more of their income on meeting basic needs.77 According to Maslow (1943), in the hierarchy of individual demands, a person’s physiological needs for basics such as food, water, and shelter dominate all other needs. In the 2000s, many developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) did well according to the regularly tracked poverty statistics and human development indicators. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. (see Table 4). The Gini inequality indexes were moderate by international standards and did not worsen in most MENA economies (Ianchovichina, 2018). where ΔLS is the difference in average subjective well‐being between 2009 and 2010, β2009 and β2010 are vectors of coefficients estimated using WLS (Columns 7 and 8 in Table 2),2525 Please note that the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition for the Lewbel estimates was not possible due to computational constraints. Araar and Verme (2016) show that in 2014 for all countries and all food products, as well as for liquefied petroleum gas and electricity, the household budget shares of expenditure on subsidized products was higher for poorer and progressively lower for richer households, and the decrease was very steep in general. Learn about our remote access options. As part of this social contract, Arab governments subsidized food and fuel, provided free education, health, and other public services, and provided jobs in the public sector. https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Edgar_Mitchell&oldid=2812820, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Edgar Mitchell Headlines Sports News Business News India News World News Bollywood News Health & … to follow and obey, and an intense dissatisfaction with things as they are, before movement and leader can make their appearance. – Edgar Mitchell In line with the empirical literature on happiness, education and marriage are positively associated with life satisfaction in developing MENA. There was growing frustration with inequality of opportunity in labor markets and the increased importance of “wasta” or connections with the elites in getting good quality jobs. The generated instruments Z are constructed from the auxiliary equations’ residuals, multiplied by each of the included exogenous variables X in mean‐centered form: Perceptions about living standards, job market conditions, and cronyism have a considerable effect on life satisfaction in MENA. Since in autocracies people’s ability to make political choices is restricted, we instead turn to the question: “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?.” We recognize, however, that this question also reflects how satisfied people are with their freedom to make individual choices about education, marriage, children, and employment. The Gallup World Poll does not have a question on the degree to which people are satisfied with the political system in the MENA countries. Our strategy for choosing Z is based on the correlation matrix of the generated instruments. Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring. Dissatisfaction, intense lobbying ahead of February 6 cabinet expansion in Karnataka. In Yemen, gender‐matched sampling was used, while the sample for Palestinian territories includes people in East Jerusalem. Dissatisfied with the educational system or the schools: Yes. In France, every child is now obliged to have 11 vaccinations. Learn more. Dissatisfaction definition, the state or attitude of not being satisfied; discontent; displeasure. With regard to employment status, we distinguish between individuals who are paid employees (reference category), self‐employed, underemployed, unemployed, or out of the workforce. Figures 3-6 show a graphic representation of the decomposition of the differential between 2009 and 2010 for the developing MENA and the Arab Spring countries2727 The detailed Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition can be found in Appendix D. The coefficient and their respective confidence intervals are available in Appendix D, Table D2. Distribution of Life Satisfaction Scores in Sub‐Saharan Africa in 2009–10. More recently, attention has shifted to a pattern observed in several transition countries, where high economic growth was accompanied by declining well‐being levels within countries (e.g., Brockmann et al., 2009; Easterlin et al., 2012; Graham et al., 2017). Teacher absenteeism was high (Brixi et al., 2015) and learning outcomes were disappointing (Devarajan and Ianchovichina, ). These personal characteristics are related to gender, age, marital status and household composition, education level, migration status, and religion. Dissatisfaction with basic public services such as healthcare, housing, schools, and infrastructure also grew in the developing MENA countries, according to Gallup World Poll data, reflecting the erosion in the quality of public services. Despite this finding, our results may underestimate the importance of the corruption domain relative to the other domains, especially given that part of the non‐response might be due to fear from the government. The ruling elites controled large parts of the private sector and profited from monopoly rights and cheap access to land and other resources (Cammett and Diwan, 2013). From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. The extent to which people are free to make choices and voice opinions has a major impact on their happiness (Inglehart et al., 2008; Verme, 2009). Unsuccessful Subjective Well-Being Assimilation Among Immigrants: The Role of Faltering Perceptions of the Host Society. For example, among Hungarians who offer a negative assessment of the country’s courts, 68% are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working, while dissatisfaction is just 32% among those who believe the courts treat everyone fairly. Worsening of other subjective indicators, such as the ability to voice concerns and demand accountability and perceptions of corruption and cronyism, may have also contributed to the deterioration in subjective well‐being. At the same time, the public had few if any channels of safe expression of opinions and grievances and opportunities to develop diverse civil society. Accordingly, “happiness” is often used interchangeably with “well‐being” or “quality of life” and in this case denotes both individual and social welfare. Analysis of attitudes toward terrorism based on value surveys. You develop an instant global consciousness. Governments responded by downsizing the public sector, removing the guarantees of secure public jobs, and initiating reforms of the food and energy subsidy programs.66 Some governments were more successful than others in cutting subsidies and improving targeting. "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. At a time when public sector employment was contracting, private sector growth was sluggish, stifled by distortions, including policies that offered advantages to a few firms with political connections.1212 There was fear that a rise of the nouveau rich would challenge existing power relations. "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. This article reviews the subjective and objective indicators of dissatisfaction with medical practice. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. Although in general the choice of Z can be random, subject to the conditions above, we opted to follow a different strategy to select our instruments. Respondents who believe that government corruption is widespread are on average 0.08 points less satisfied with life (model 7, Table 2). From out there on the moon. We do so by employing both objective and perceptions data regarding different aspects of life and society. For instance, although access to free public health and education improved dramatically over the years, teacher and doctor absenteeism became a severe problem hurting learning outcomes and forcing people to pay out of pocket for better quality private‐sector services (Brixi et al., 2015; Devarajan and Ianchovichina, ). The higher the score on the ladder, the closer one’s life is seen to his or her ideal life. Table 2 reports results from different specifications of our life satisfaction model. In addition, perceptions about corruption became more important for people’s life satisfaction, particularly in the Arab Spring countries where the uprisings were most intense. Headlines Sports News Business News India News World News Bollywood News Health & … Lack of quality jobs is another reason for the discontent and remains a significant factor even after controlling for employment status. In Syria, the index dropped from 3.4 in 2003 to 2.5 in 2010. Hence, for developing MENA it can be concluded that worsening conditions and perceptions led to a decline in life satisfaction in the period 2009‐2010 and changes in the importance of these domains (their weights in the life satisfaction equation) was not the main reason for this decline. The main findings related to the subjective factors, representing the main grievances on the eve of the Arab Spring, can be summarized as follows. In addition, we control for whether people are employed in government positions or not (reference category is “Other”). Because of this intense power of attentiveness, we have the ability to relate our experiences to those of others, and thus we may have heightened powers of empathy. Reforms implemented in the 1990s delivered economic growth (World Bank, 2011), but this growth was not inclusive as the private sector did not create jobs fast enough to absorb the large number of young people entering the labor force. Strikingly, civil and political freedom (42.4 percent) only comes in fourth place and is, hence, neither found associated with dissatisfaction in developing MENA nor regarded as one of the most important grievances related to the uprisings. “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.” The richer households spent more on gasoline and diesel than the poorer households, but the expenditure shares of the rich on these two energy products were small, at close to or below 3 percent.

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