The relationship between socio-economic indicators and social happiness

Although social happiness has always been an important and interesting topic, it has been emphasized as one of the central topics of many studies in recent years. Some studies indicate a relationship between economic indicators and social happiness, while some others reject such a relationship.Aiming at investigating the relationship between economic indicators and social happiness, the present research has provided a secondary analysis of the existing data in each province of Iran. The data related to social happiness have been derived from a study by Montazeri et al. (2012), and those related to economic indicators have been derived from the survey results of industrial workshops with 10 employees or more, conducted by the Statistical Center of Iran (2012).The data analysis showed that there is no significant relationship between social happiness and different economic indicators including the Gini coefficient, participation rate, value added, underemployment rate, unemployment rate, production per capita, value added per capita, and share of industry in total employment. These findings suggest that social happiness is a complex social phenomenon the causes and factors of which should be sought in other social, cultural and political areas.