Determining The Relationship Between Happiness And Human Development: Multivariate Statistical Approach

Abstract

It has been understood that it is not enough to consider just certain macro-economic indicators to determine the development level of countries. Human Development Index (HDI), which is a part of the Human Development Report (HDR) published by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a complex index prepared for this end with a focus on education and health as well as income. Yet, once it was realized that this index had certain limitations, some other indices were created. Happy Planet Index (HPI), which was first used by New Economic Foundation (NEF) in 2006, is one of these indices. In this study, canonical correlation analysis, a multivariate statistical method was applied to examine the relation between HDI and HPI calculated for 150 countries. The empirical findings of the study have revealed that there is a very strong and meaningful canonical relation between HDI and HPI.