Can Revenue and Human Development Promote Happiness: Study on Provinces in Indonesia

This study seeks to see the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and gross regional domestic product (GRDP) variables on the happiness of economic growth data for provinces in Indonesia. The method used in this research is regression and path analysis. This study proves that happiness is not caused by the income (GRDP) of a region but rather significantly by one of the dimensions of HDI, namely the education dimension. The relationship through the variable between using path analysis through the indirect effect of the GRDP intermediary also significantly affects the education dimension. About 60% of the variable quality of education plays a role in happiness. If the effect is through an intermediary variable, the real influence of the variable quality of education on happiness is 65%. Other variables such as health and economy, directly or indirectly, do not significantly affect the level of happiness.JEL Classification: I3, E5, R10How to Cite:Rizal, S., & Fitrianto, A. (2021). Can Revenue and Human Development Promote Happiness: Study on Provinces in Indonesia. Signifikan: Jurnal Ilmu Ekonomi, 10(1), 113-128. https://doi.org/10.15408/sjie.v10i1.17600.

Happiness is from the soul: The nature and origins of our happiness concept

What is happiness? Is happiness about feeling good or about being good? Across five studies, we explored the nature and origins of our happiness concept developmentally and cross-linguistically. We found that surprisingly, children as young as age 4 viewed morally bad people as less happy than morally good people, even if the characters all have positive subjective states (Study 1). Moral character did not affect attributions of physical traits (Study 2), and was more powerfully weighted than subjective states in attributions of happiness (Study 3). Moreover, moral character but not intelligence influenced children and adults’ happiness attributions (Study 4). Finally, Chinese people responded similarly when attributing happiness with two words, despite one (“Gao Xing”) being substantially more descriptive than the other (“Kuai Le”) (Study 5). Therefore, we found that moral judgment plays a relatively unique role in happiness attributions, which is surprisingly early emerging and largely independent of linguistic and cultural influences, and thus likely reflects a fundamental cognitive feature of the mind.