Do Life satisfaction and Women's political empowerment go together across countries?

Across 157 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = +0.52, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.57.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 2011-2025, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is +0.095 (156 countries, 2,064 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.014.

Does Life satisfaction cause Women's political empowerment?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Life satisfaction vs. Women's political empowerment

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 157 countries, Life satisfaction and Women's political empowerment rise and fall together at r = +0.52 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.30 (q = 0.048, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak positive link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of women's political empowerment, 0.625 to 0.874 points, life satisfaction is better by 0.841 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.323 points.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.521p = 2.6e-12 · 157 countries

After adjusting for national income+0.302p = 0.000 · likely range [+0.15, +0.44]

p, allowing for regions0.053standard error 0.126 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.048across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Life satisfaction · score (0-10)link with income +0.81 · proxy

Women's political empowerment · index (0-1)link with income +0.54 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	+0.521	2.6e-12	157
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.575	3.6e-15	157
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	+0.302	0.000	157
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	+0.266	0.001	157

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 157 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.219 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.241 (without AFG) to +0.318 (without TJK). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AFG (-0.061).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	16	+0.65
Europe & Central Asia	49	+0.22
Latin America & Caribbean	22	+0.33
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	21	+0.28
Sub-Saharan Africa	41	+0.11

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	53	+0.27
Middle third	52	+0.35
Richest third	52	+0.31

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	89	+0.22
Muslims	47	+0.30

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	25	+0.52
Never a European colony	21	+0.43
Spain	18	-0.08
United Kingdom	44	+0.09

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.251 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 15years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.095, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose life satisfaction moved did not tend to see their women's political empowerment move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.302for comparison

Within countries+0.095each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.095q = 0.503 · 156 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.014q = 0.776

Read with care.

Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

2,064 country-years (one country in one year), 156 countries, 2011–2025, about 13 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 5% for Life satisfaction, 9% for Women's political empowerment. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): +0.095. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data

	score (0-10)	index (0-1)	Years
Finland FIN	7.76	0.932	2025
Iceland ISL	7.54	0.883	2025
Denmark DNK	7.54	0.954	2025
Costa Rica CRI	7.44	0.907	2025
Sweden SWE	7.25	0.923	2025
Norway NOR	7.24	0.926	2025
Netherlands NLD	7.22	0.903	2025
Israel ISR	7.19	0.862	2025
Luxembourg LUX	7.06	0.896	2025
Switzerland CHE	7.02	0.93	2025
New Zealand NZL	7	0.937	2025
Mexico MEX	6.97	0.801	2025
Ireland IRL	6.93	0.927	2025
Belgium BEL	6.93	0.952	2025
Australia AUS	6.92	0.906	2025

Helliwell, J. et al., World Happiness Report; underlying data Gallup World Poll
Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project

Sources

Life satisfaction

Life satisfaction (Cantril ladder score)

Gallup / World Happiness Report · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

The national average answer to the "Cantril ladder" question: "Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top...". It is a direct survey measure, not a combined index. The six factors the World Happiness Report uses to explain the ladder are not part of it. Values are usually three-year rolling averages of the Gallup World Poll. So each year's value overlaps with the next, and they are not separate readings.

Women's political empowerment

Women's political empowerment index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Women's civil liberties, their part in civic groups, and their political representation. It is built from its own set of questions, not from the parts of the democracy indices, so it is not tagged as measuring the same thing. Still, read its links with them carefully. Whether women take part in politics is partly built into whether real political participation exists at all. So a strong link with general democracy measures is closer to definitional (true by how the terms are defined) than to a finding about the world.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Life satisfaction and Women's political empowerment

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Life satisfaction changes Women's political empowerment, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.