Angela Leite, Anna Costa, Paulo Diaz and Ruut Veenhoven
In: Magalhães, L., Ferreira Lopes, M.J., Nobre, B., Onofre Pinto, J.C. (eds) Humanistic Perspectives in Happiness Research. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. Switzerland https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38600-8_10
ABSTRACT
It is generally assumed that doing well in school will add to your happiness in later life. There is much indirect evidence for that belief, such as that higher educated people earn more income, have better marriage changes, are healthier and live longer. Yet, empirical studies show mostly low correlations between level of school education and happiness. That impression was checked in a synthesis of 86 research findings available in the World Database of Happiness. The average zero-order correlation was small (r = +0.09) and there was much variation aound this average (SD = 0.13). This small correlation was wiped away in multi-variate analyses that control for possible indirect effects of school-education, such as income. So, school-education as such does not seem to add to your happiness.
Next, we considered the correlation between average happiness in nations and level of education in the population in147 nations and found a strong positive relationship: r = +0.59.
A plausible explanation for the positive effect of education on average happiness in nations is that an educated population of required for the functioning of modern societies, with their high division of labor, and that people live happier in modern societies. It is less easy to understand why education hardly adds to the happiness of higher educated personally. Since there are evident positive effects, such as the higher income mentioned above, there must be negative effects which balance the out. It is a task for further research to identify these negative effects.
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