Can a healthy climate make us happier?: a study on climate change and other effects affecting happiness

Abstract

Combating climate change is a shared responsibility. It affects the livelihood of all living species on Earth through the access to resources and the physical environment, which impacts our health, happiness, and economic activities. For this reason, we expect individuals to have a preference for certain types of climate. Using data obtained from the World Values Survey, this paper estimates the impact of climate change on self-reported happiness and how this relationship varies across space and time. In this paper, maximum temperature (tmx) is selected as the climate change variable. Our estimates suggest that the self-reported levels of happiness fall as the severity of climate change increases. We have also determined that countries in different regions of the world report varying levels of happiness given their geographical climate. Colder countries record increased happiness as they move closer to the ideal temperature range while warmer countries are reporting higher levels of unhappiness with a marginal increase in tmx. To gain further insights on the relationship between happiness and tmx, this paper extends into studying further effects of this relationship by including interaction terms - “tmx x male”, “tmx x employed” and “tmx x education” and quadratic terms.