Does being ethical make you happier?

This paper proposes a contemporary assessment of Aristotle’s discussion of ethics and happiness for 11 large cultural groups. Our study adopts the division of cultural regions proposed by Fellmann et al. (1997) and World Value Survey’s subjective well-being and virtues data of 60.000 individuals for 55 countries between 2010 to 2014. The binary response model (probit) has life satisfaction as the dependent variable and as explanatory variables a group of ethical virtues. Such ethical virtues explore the perception that individuals have on issues related to humanitarianism, race, religion, and tax behavior; while intellectual virtues look at art, music, and education. Our results show that jointly (globally), countries presenting the virtues proposed by Aristotle is positively correlated with happiness. Additionally, our regional estimates suggest that cultural factors may influence which ethical values and behaviors are relevant to our level of life satisfaction in each macroregion.