Democracy, Human Development, and Happiness Indices as Precursors of International Student Success

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationships between educational attainment as expressed in PISA scores and several socio-economic and political variables some of which are sub-indices of Human Development Index. The correlation analysis reveals that there are highly significant associations between educational attainment and civil liberties, political participation, GDP per capita, average years of schooling, expected years of schooling and happiness. However, of these, regression analysis indicates that only expected years of schooling and average years of schooling appear as predictors of educational attainment. The lack of explanatory power of political participation, happiness and civil liberties variables may possibly be due to the inclusion of hard to measure subjective factors in the definition of these, which may not reflect the true state of affairs.