The Effect of Human Development on Happiness: A Comparative Study of UN Member States

The main objectives of this study are to estimate the human development effects on happiness by using economic freedom, economic growth, and income as control variables. The study analyzes the 1080 observations using the panel data from 2008 to 2016 period covered 120 countries. The main explained variable of this study is happiness and major interested explanatory variables are the Human Development Index. The estimation strategy of this study is to apply the fixed and random effect, the Generalized Liner Squire, First in Difference and Linear Dynamic Panel Data /generalized method of moments estimation method. The study estimated the strongly linear positive association and statistically significant result between human development index with happiness in the overall 120 sampling countries. The study investigated the negative relationship between life expectancy and happiness and the positive association between economic growth and income with happiness. The study indicated a positive association between government health expenditures and food on happiness.