Ecology and Happiness: how Air Pollution influences Happiness of the Population

Abstract

Recent decades have seen accelerating interest in key factors of happiness driven by patterns of modern life. While more and more often global communities appeal to wider audiences, highlighting the need to commit to achievement of major goals of sustainable development, elimination of negative footprint and raising the bar of living standards, people are paying more attention to the living conditions they find themselves in. The government is focused on life satisfaction to identify major areas for improvement and to develop effective policy measures. This paper aims to estimate how and to which extent unfavorable ecological situation, primarily low air quality, impact population well-being and happiness. Recent studies point out that environmental conditions considerably influence subjective life satisfaction of an individual. On these pages, we test the relation between air pollution and people’s happiness at country level. Our findings show significantly negative impact, which signals the need to reduce emissions and propose solutions to lower the level of air pollution.