J. Quant. Econ.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-018-0125-8

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A Study on Happiness and Related Factors Among

Indian College Students

Bidisha Chakraborty1 · Souparna Maji1 · Anamika Sen2 ·

Isha Mallik2 · Sayantan Baidya1 · Esha Dwibedi1

© The Indian Econometric Society 2018

Abstract Happiness is considered to be one of the ultimate goals of life. This paper
studies the happiness of Indian college and university students aged between 18 and
24 years. It attempts to answer whether and to what extent happiness of a student is
significantly related to aspects of social life such as time spent with family, friends,
being in a relationship, logging into social networking sites; academic factors such
as job prospects of the chosen field of study and academic environment; and other
personal factors such as health condition, over thinking or dwelling on past bad mem-
ories, addiction to tobacco/drug/alcohol. Moreover, this paper also inquires about the

We are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. We are also thankful to
Anamika Sen, Isha Mallik, Sayantan Baidya, and Esha Dwibedi for their valuable suggestions and
contribution in the data collection.

B Bidisha Chakraborty
bidisha.chakraborty@gmail.com
B Souparna Maji
souparnomaji@gmail.com
Anamika Sen
anamika716@gmail.com
Isha Mallik
mallik.isha@gmail.com
Sayantan Baidya
thatssayantan@gmail.com
Esha Dwibedi
edwibedi@gmail.com

1 Jadavpur University, 188, Raja Subodh Chandra Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal,
India
2 Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

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relationship between a student’s average happiness with her gender as well as the
income class to which she belongs. It has been observed that among different aspects
of social life, time spent with family and friends are significant while logging into
social networking site is found out to be insignificant. Also being in a relationship is
significantly but negatively related to happiness for male students. Job Prospects of the
current field of study is a highly significant covariate of happiness irrespective of the
gender of the student. Among different aspects of the personal situation, dwelling on
past bad memories decreases happiness of both male and female students. Addiction
to tobacco/alcohol is a negative covariate of female happiness. Furthermore, income
and gender are seen to play an insignificant role in the happiness of Indian college and
university students.

Keywords Happiness · India · Students · Dummy regression · OLS · OLOGIT

JEL classification C21 · D01 · I31

Introduction

Traditionally, happiness was considered to be an abstract concept—something that

cannot be seen or felt but exists nonetheless. However, that has never deterred gen-
erations of psychologists from attempting to study it. The study of happiness was
for long, the province of psychology. It is only in recent times that psychological
research in this field has been combined with economics. The economics of happi-
ness is an approach to assess welfare by combining the approach of economists and
psychologists and relying on more expansive notions of utility and welfare than con-
ventional economics. The results obtained from this field are not important merely for
their contribution to the understanding of human behaviour but have policy implica-
tions as well. While Bhutan may have made a bold step in introducing the concept
of ‘Gross National Happiness’—a twist on the more popularly known term ‘Gross
National Product’ as a measure of the nation’s well-being, more and more economists
are beginning to acknowledge that happiness surveys can serve as a complement to
public policies.
The contribution by Easterlin (1974) is considered to be a path-breaking in the field
of happiness economics, but at that time it found few followers. General interest in the
measurement and causes of reported subjective well-being was raised by a symposium
(Frank 1997; Yew Kwang 1997; Oswald 1997). Since the late 1990s, economists have
started to contribute to the empirical analysis of the related factors of happiness in
different countries and periods.
The bounded rationality concept suggests that preference may not in some cases be
recovered through observation of human behaviour alone even if they can be observed
directly (Simon 1978; Conlisk 1996; Kahneman 2003). Frey and Stutzer (2002) also
conclude that an objective approach restricts the possibility of understanding and
influencing human well-being. These studies suggest that along with an objective
approach, a subjective approach, which allows us to capture well-being directly, should
be studied by economists. However, one of the main reasons why economists have

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refrained from using subjective information is because of justifiable concerns about

subjective well-being being prone to non-sampling bias. For instance, people may
overstate their happiness level to maintain their self-respect over the interviewer;
situational factors such as mood and weather may also affect their response at the
time of the study (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2001).
Given that such caveats exist, it is not surprising that researchers remain sceptical as
to whether self-rated well-being data is valid and reliable. However, it has been shown
that happiness data correlate substantially with other subjective data. These include,
for example, self-rated happiness data is shown to be correlated well with assessments
of the person’s happiness by friends and family (Diener 1984; Pavot and Diener 1993);
reports by spouses (Costa and McCrae 1988), reports from clinical experts (Goldings
1954), and with memory measures in which people must remember good versus bad
events in their lifetime (Balatsky and Diener 1993).
Regarding the non-sampling issue, it is believed that such a deterministic bias from
an individual’s desire to maintain a high degree of happiness depends on the respon-
dent’s respective culture. Thus, provided the cultural differences of the populations
compared are not too large, reported subjective well-being could be used as a valid
ordinal measure for true well-being (Diener and Suh 2000; Hollander 2001). Also,
a number of subjective well-being correlations have been identified that are highly
plausible and stable across populations and over time (Argyle 1989).
In the existing literature, happiness has been linked to various economic variables.
Regarding the impact of absolute income on happiness, Kahneman et al. (2006) in their
study explained that high-income individuals are associated with no greater happiness,
on average, but with slightly higher tension and stress. Blanchflower and Oswald
(2002), Easterlin (1995) and Frey and Stutzer (2002) show in their studies that richer
individuals of United States reported higher happiness. Di Tella et al. (2003) show
in their research that happiness equations are monotonically increasing in income
using the data of Europe and America from the 1970s to 1990s. In the context of the
developing economy, we find two studies. Knight et al. (2007) estimate happiness
functions in rural China using the concept of subjective well-being. Lakshmanasamy
(2010) shows that in India money does influence the well-being of individuals and
relative income largely affects individual’s life satisfaction but an increase in absolute
income beyond a certain threshold level may not bring more happiness.
The pioneering work by Easterlin (1974) led to the happiness paradox which states
that at a point in time within countries, happiness and income are correlated. But over
time, happiness does not increase proportionally to a country’s increase in income.
Later studies have confirmed Easterlin’s findings as to the stagnant long-run relation-
ship between happiness and real GDP in America (Easterlin 1995; Di Tella et al.
2003). Economists like Easterlin (2003), Duesenbery (1949) and Frank (1999) have
emphasised on relative income rather than absolute income as a determinant of happi-
ness. Furthermore, recently, some authors have incorporated psychological variables
(personality traits, other psychological capitals) into the individual’s utility function
(Goldsmith et al. 1997; Borghans et al. 2008). Following this approach, several studies
have recently estimated happiness functions with attitude as an explanatory vari-
able and have found a significant correlation between positive attitude and happiness
(Mohanty 2009, 2014; Liu and Mohanty 2015). These studies have demonstrated hap-

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piness being a human feeling cannot be independent of the individual’s attitude to life.
Positive attitude thus emerges as a significant covariate of personal happiness. Mohanty
(2014) in a study with US longitudinal data has demonstrated that the relationship of
personal happiness with a positive attitude is stronger than that with income.
In India, HT-MaRS happiness survey conducted among 5400 people across 16
cities in India has shown that smaller cities and not metropolises show a higher level
of happiness—regarding health, monetary possession, and personal life. Of all age
groups, the 60-plus is the unhappiest regarding money and health. This could have
severe implications for the social security system of our country especially since
studies conducted in other countries report old people to be quite happy. The survey
also shows that Indian homemakers are happier with their money than working women
(January 12, 2013; Hindustan Times).
This paper draws its inspiration from the fact that young people—primarily the
students of colleges and universities form an essential part of a country’s population.
There exists a rich literature on happiness across students and youth over the years
namely (King 2014; Francis 2014; Abdel Khalek 2002, 2004; Proto 2010; Mahaarcha
and Kittisuksathit 2010; Abecia et al. 2014; Zhou 2013; Weaver 2010; Chan 2005;
Demirbatir et al. 2013). But there is hardly any such study on Indian students. In India,
almost 46% of the total population is aged less than 24 years, whereas in the United
States 33% of the entire population is in this demographic range. Since India is densely
populated with youth population, one must face fierce competition for getting a good
job. Often academic success is necessary for getting a good job. So the life of a typical
student in India is one of extreme academic pressure and excessive competition, both
things which are bound to have an impact on their overall well-being. Moreover, in the
current era of internet and social networking, Indian society is undergoing a drastic
change in urban and suburban areas. Joint families are breaking down to nuclear
families. Still, for a majority of the Indians, spending time with family members or
friends are believed to be an essential factor in their social sphere. So, social life and
personal situation are bound to have an impact on their overall well-being. Further, it is
reported that suicide rates in India are highest in the 15–29 age group. 1 In this context,
it is essential to study the related factors of the happiness of young Indians. However,
it has been observed that hardly any such happiness studies in India have focussed
on students. This paper tries to fill this gap by studying the factors that significantly
relate to the happiness of college and university students on the basis of primary data
collected through a sample survey.
This paper uses OLS, OLOGIT and statistical tests to find out whether aspects of
social life such as time spent with family, friends, being in a relationship, logging
into social networking sites; academic factors such as job prospects of the chosen
field of study and academic environment; and other personal factors such as health,
overthinking or dwelling on past bad memories, addiction to tobacco/drug/alcohol are
significantly related to the happiness of college and university students of ages 18–24
or not. This paper also inquires about whether income and gender are significantly
related to the happiness of a student?

1 Source: NDTV, June 22, 2012.

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This paper is organised as follows: Sect. 2 describes the method of collection

of data, the questionnaire is described and explained in Sect. 3, Sect. 4 discusses
the regression results to analyse the relationship between overall happiness and its
related factors, Sect. 5 sheds light on the ranking pattern over the aspects of social life
and personal situation, Sect. 6 discusses the relationship between income classes and
overall happiness, Sect. 7 sheds light on the level of happiness across gender and the
conclusion of the paper is in Sect. 8.

Collection of Data

Data was collected through a primary sample survey from Indian college and univer-
sity students of aged 18–24 years. These college and university students are mainly
from metropolitan cities of India. Online surveys were tried out and were especially
successful, we believe, due to the demographics of the population under scrutiny.
Response rates were very high, and the method proved to be far less time consuming
than the conventional distribution of a questionnaire. The survey was carried out in
2014. We collected data from students of higher education institutions all over India.
The sample was based on the respondents coming from both genders, from different
income groups and varied fields of study.
While collecting the requisite information from the samples in consideration, we
adopted the Questionnaire method. Our overall sample size stands at 449, out of which
400 were collected through online survey and the rest by the conventional distribution
of the questionnaire. These respondents were engaged in varied fields of study such as
Social Sciences, Liberal Arts, Engineering, Law, Medical Sciences, Basic Sciences,
Journalism and Media Studies, and Commerce etc. Out of the 449 students surveyed
229 were males, and 220 were females.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire is divided into five sections. Section 0 requires basic information that
comprises of the respondent’s gender, age, field of study, college/university, current
level of education, family size and monthly family income group out of Below INR
10,000, INR 10,000–INR 25,000, INR 25,000–INR 50,000, INR 50,000–INR 1,00,000
and Above INR 1,00,000. These categories have been used subsequently to compare
happiness across income groups, thereby inferring whether happiness is significantly
related to income or not. We have also compared happiness across the two genders to
see if gender plays an influential role in a student’s happiness. Section 1 comprises
of statements to which the student was asked to respond by choosing any one of
‘agree’, ‘partly agree’, or ‘disagree’. All of the subsequent sections (sections 2, 3, and
4) comprise of statements to which the student was asked to respond by choosing any
one of ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ or ‘yes’ or ‘no’. 2

2 Questionnaire is given in Appendix A.1.

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The objective of section 1 is to measure the level of the respondent’s overall hap-
piness. To help in this endeavour, we have chosen questions/statements following a
pre-existing happiness indexing questionnaire- the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire,
developed by Oxford Brookes University. To maintain the brevity of our question-
naire, which contains further sections to glean information on many more aspects, we
could not adopt the said questionnaire in its entirety but had to remove some queries.
These statements are assertions about life in general. The overall happiness (summed
up responses from section 1) takes the values 5–25 while that for male sample takes
the values 5, and 8–25; and for female samples 5–25.
Section 2 seeks for information about respondent’s social aspect of her/his life. Sev-
eral questions are asked in this section regarding friends, family, relationship and social
networking, and at the end of the segment, the respondent is asked to rank these four
components in order of their importance in influencing her/his social life. Section 3
looks to seek information concerning their academic environment and prospects. Sec-
tion 4 is meant to judge the aspects of their personal situation. It comprises of several
statements regarding his/her health issues, dwelling on past bad memories, addiction
to tobacco/alcohol/banned substances, and financial situation. At the end of this sec-
tion 4, the respondent is required to rank three aspects (mental and physical health,
leisure, and financial situation) in order of their importance in influencing his/her
happiness with his/her personal Situation.

Happiness and Its Related Factors

To answer the questions posed in the introduction of this paper, we resort to regression
of the overall happiness on the dummy variables representing income classes, gender,
and different aspects of social life, personal life, academic environment and prospects.

Dummy Variables

The prime objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between overall hap-
piness and its related factors. Thus, the purpose is to regress the overall happiness on
the different aspects of social life, academic performance and prospect, and personal
situation, i.e. to regress overall happiness on its covariates.
To represent different aspects of social life, academic performance, or personal
situation, we look into the questionnaire to create dummy variables. The responses
received from the questions/statements of sections 2, 3 and 4 in the questionnaire are
converted into dummy variables by assigning values 1 in case of ‘agree’ (or, ‘yes’)
and 0 in case of ‘disagree’ (or, ‘no’). We have created several dummy variables in this
manner that will serve our purpose.
In the questionnaire, there are six questions (see section 2 in Appendix A.1) related
to social life. We have selected the following questions/statements to create the dummy
variables for addressing each of the aspects of family, family, relationship, and social
networking:
1. The quality time I spend with my family is fulfilling (S1 );

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2. I enjoy spending time with my friend(s) (S2 );.

3. I am presently in a relationship (S3 );
4. I log into social networking sites frequently (S4 ).
There are three questions (see section 3 in Appendix A.1) related to academic
environment and prospects. We have created two dummy variables to represent the
academic factors associated with the college/university students:
1. I am satisfied with my future job prospects in this field (A1 );
2. I am satisfied with the academic environment of my educational institute (A2 ).
There are five questions (see section 4 in Appendix A.1) related to the personal
situation. We have selected the following questions/statements for the purpose of
creating the dummy variables to reflect the shades of different aspects of the personal
situation of college/university students:
1. I overthink about my bad past memories (P1 );
2. I have some major chronic or recurring health problem/disability (P2 );
3. I am addicted to tobacco/alcohol/drugs (P3 ).
The coefficient of these dummy variable is easy to interpret regardless of whether
we use ordinary least square (OLS) method of estimation or logistic regression.

OLS Regression Model

The dummy regression equation for ordinary least squares estimation for the overall
sample is:

Hi  β1 + β2 S1i + β3 S2i + β4 S3i + β5 S4i + β6 A1i + β7 A2i + β8 P1i + β9 P2i

+ β10 P3i + β11 D2i + β12 D3i + β13 D4i + β14 D5i + β16 G1i + ui .

In the regression equation, Hi is overall happiness, and the set of dummy variables
(S1i , S2i , S3i , S4i , A1i , A2i , P1i , P2i , and P3i ) are assigned the value 1 for the response
category ‘agree’ or ‘yes’. The other dummy variables are constructed in the following
way:
D2i  1 if the student belongs to the income class Rs.10, 000 − Rs.25, 000
 0 otherwise (i.e. the student belongs to other income classes) ;

D3i  1 if the student belongs to the income class Rs.25, 000 − Rs.50, 000
 0 otherwise (i.e. the student belongs to other income classes) ;

D3i  1 if the student belongs to the income class Rs.50, 000 − Rs.100, 000
 0 otherwise (i.e. the student belongs to other income classes) ;

D5i  1 if the student belongs to the income class Rs.100, 000 and above
 0 otherwise (i.e. the student belongs to other income classes) ;

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G1i  1 if the student is a male

 0 if the student is a female.

This regression model is like any multiple regression models. However, we have
dummy regressors here. In the present model, β1 is the intercept which indicates the
happiness score of the benchmark group with the response category of ‘disagree’ or
‘no’ for the selected questions/statements related to social life, academic factors, and
personal situation interacted with respondents belonging to female and income class
below Rs. 10,000. All comparisons are made with respect to this benchmark category.
However, for the regression over only male or female sample, we drop the gender
dummy (G1 ) due to its irrelevance.
The questions/statements to create the dummy variables are selected in such a way
that a positive and statistically significant slope coefficient in each case would indicate
that any aspect of social life, academic factors or personal situation of interest is
positively related to happiness. The results based on the OLS regression is presented
in Table 1. The answers to questions of happiness survey are ordinal rather than
cardinal, and we have quantified them using dummies. Though it is impossible to
measure the precise effects of independent variables on true happiness, researchers
such as Graham (2005); Blanchflower and Oswald (2002); Knight et al. (2007) have
used the OLS coefficients as a basis for assigning relative weights to them.
In this Classical Linear Regression Model (CLRM) homoscedasticity (ui ∼
N(0, σ 2 )∀i) and no autocorrelation (Cov (u i , u j )  0 ∀i  j) of error terms are
assumed, and it is assumed that errors are not correlated to explanatory variables,
i.e. the model specification is correct. Ramsey RESET test for Model Specification
justifies the specification of the model. Breusch-Pagan/Cook-Weisberg test for het-
eroskedasticity confirms that there is no heteroscedasticity. 3 In addition to the OLS
estimation, we have further proceeded with ordered logit to analyse the relationship
between the covariates indicating the aspects of social life, academic factors, and
personal situation and the overall happiness.

Ordered LOGIT Regression

Since happiness of one individual cannot be observed and is measured by a categorical

variable, we fit ordered logit model to our data. For ordered Logit model, we write the
simple ordered logit regression model as:


K
Hi∗  a j + βk X ik + u i ,
k1

where Hi∗ is a latent variable as it is not observed. It measures continuously varying

happiness level of individual ‘i’. Xik denotes explanatory variables that are observed
socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals;–in this model a set of dummy vari-
ables namely S1i , S2i , S3i , S4i , A1i , A2i , P1i , P2i , P3i , D2i , D3i , D4i , D5i , and G1i . The

3 Our model specification is correct. Please see Appendix A.3.

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 Table 1 Results of regression (OLS and OLOGIT)

Variables Entire sample Male sample Female sample

J. Quant. Econ.

OLS OLOGIT OLS OLOGIT OLS OLOGIT

Male dummy 0.41 0.20 – – – –

Rs 10,000–Rs 25,000 0.31 0.18 1.14 0.54 − 0.77 − 0.57
Rs 25,000–Rs 50,000 0.36 0.26 − 0.16 0.10 0.65 0.09
Rs 50,000–Rs 100,000 0.58 0.33 0.99 0.59 − 0.28 − 0.31
Rs 100,000 and above 0.66 0.4 0.40 0.37 0.83 0.29
Family 1.20** 0.61** 1.32* 0.66* 0.89 0.49
Friends 4.28* 1.87** 0.69 0.39 5.48** 2.44**
Relationship − 0.94** − 0.45** − 1.01* − 0.53** − 0.79 − 0.39
Logging into social networking site 0.35 0.17 0.46 0.30 0.45 0.15
Job prospect 2.43*** 1.16*** 2.99*** 1.43*** 2.00*** 0.95***
Academic environment − 0.44 − 0.17 − 0.39 − 0.21 − 0.28 − 0.04
Overthinking about bad memories − 2.17*** − 0.99*** − 2.10*** − 1.04** − 2.19*** − 1.02***
Health problem 0.33 0.23 0.47 0.16 0.36 0.29
Addiction to tobacco/alcohol/drugs − 0.23 − 0.14 0.49 0.20 − 2.5*** − 1.27
Constant 9.68 – 12.62 – 9.42 –
F(LR chi2 for OLOGIT) 5.73 78.09 3.42 43.33 4.07 52.32
Prob > F(Prob > chi2 for OLOGIT) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Adjusted R square (Pseudo R squared for 0.13 0.03 0.12 0.04 0.16 0.04
OLOGIT)
***Significance at 1% level
**Significance at 5% level
*Significance at 10% level

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β’s are the associated linear coefficients; aj denotes the cut points or threshold values;
K denotes the number of regressors excluding the intercept; i denote the number of
observation and ui s are the error terms. In ordered logit model error terms are assumed
to follow a standard logistic distribution. If Z follows standard logistic distribution,
cumulative distribution function of Z is given by F (z)  ez /(1 + ez ). Hence the distribu-
tion function of ui is given by F (z)  ez /(1 + e z ). where F() stands for the cumulative
normal distribution.
From the data, it is observed that overall happiness Hi (sum of all responses) for
our entire sample takes the values 5–25 (21 values) while that for male sample takes
the values 5, and 8–25 (19 values) and for female samples 5–25 (21 values). Hence
there are 18 threshold values for male students while 20 threshold values for female
students and overall students. The ordered logit regressions yield maximum likelihood
estimates of the parameters of the latent happiness function:

Hi  5 if Hi∗ ≤ a1 ;
Hi  6 if a1 ≤ Hi∗ ≤ a2 ;
Hi  7 if a2 ≤ Hi∗ ≤ a3 ; . . . and
Hi  20 if a19 ≤ Hi∗ ≤ a20 ;
Hi  25if Hi∗ ≥ a20 ;

where a1 , a2 , a3 , a4… . a20 are cut-points or threshold values. Cut-points (a.k.a. thresh-
olds) are used to differentiate the adjacent levels of the response variable. A threshold
is defined as points on the latent variable (H i * ), that result in the different observed
values on the proxy variable (Hi , the dependent variable used to measure the latent
variable). The higher the value of latent variable Hi * , it is more likely that the individ-
ual will fall into the higher category of self-assessed happiness. The threshold values
(aj ) correspond to the cut-offs where individual moves from reporting one category of
happiness to other.
Table 1 presents the OLS and OLOGIT regression results.
The likelihood ratios Chi square with a p value of 0.0000 for all the 3 cases (entire
sample, male and female) for the ordered logit regression tells us that our model as a
whole fits significantly better than an empty model (i.e., a model with no predictors).
The logistic regression coefficients give the change in the log odds of the outcome for
a one unit increase in the predictor variables.
Like the ordinary least square linear regression analysis, in the ordered logistics
regression analysis, some of the explanatory variables are statistically significant.
From Table 1, it is observed that quality time spent with family members is related
to the happiness of male students in a positive and significant way while enjoying
time with friends has a positive relationship with the overall happiness for female
students. As the respondents are college students of 18–24 age group, the negative
impact of relationship on the happiness of male students is an important finding.
The respondents may be too young and immature to handle the relationship. Though
academic environment is not significantly related to the overall happiness, good job
prospect of the chosen field of study has a positive and significant coefficient in the
regression results for male respondents and female respondents both. India is one of the

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most densely populated countries in the world. Immediately after graduation, students
have to face stiff competition to get a job opportunity. In this context, it is obvious that
satisfactory job prospects would enter with positive and significant coefficient in the
regression of overall happiness.
Traditionally, in Indian society men have been the primary earning members of a
household. So a male college student has to always keep in mind his job prospects in the
current field of study. However, in recent decades, particularly in cities and suburbs, a
change of mindset is prominent. Nancy Lockwood et al. (2009) of Society for Human
Resource Management writes that “In the past two decades or so, social change in India
is dramatic in contrast to the traditional Indian culture. These changes have led to Indian
families giving education opportunities to girls, accepting women working outside the
home, pursuing a career, and opening the possibility for women to attain managerial
roles in corporate India”. Lockwood claims that change is slow, yet the scale of cultural
change can be sensed from the fact that of India’s 397 million workers, 124 million
are now women. Moreover, social hierarchy, strict social taboos (no formal education
for girls etc.) and patriarchal families have governed Indian society for thousands of
years. Given the prolonged history of oppression, the importance of job prospect for
female students to establish their equal social status through financial independence
after centuries of being outranked by men is comprehensible.
Dwelling on bad memories enters with negative and significant coefficient in regres-
sion results of male and female respondents. This finding is consistent with the common
belief that overthinking over the past unsatisfying memories is a source of unhappiness.
The regression results also show that addiction to tobacco/alcohol/banned substances
is negatively related to the happiness of female students. In the regression of entire
sample, male dummy or income dummy variables are found out to be insignificant.
Our data shows mean happiness varies very little across the gender or different income
levels. Also, gender or income level substantially impacting happiness level is unlikely
at a glance of summary statistics. 4 The relationship between overall happiness and
income or with gender is reexamined in details in sections 6 and 7.
The study by Kross et al. (2013) reveals that Facebook use or use of social network-
ing sites decline subjective well-being in young adults. Liberman et al. (2009) observe
that the self-reported happiness is associated with less endorsement of negative mem-
ories. Sher (2004) discusses the associations between depression or psychological
problems and alcoholism. Easterlin (2004) mentions family life, matters related to
the job, emotional stability with personal worth and self-discipline, etc. as important
sources of happiness. Therefore, the results in this paper are somewhat consistent
with the existing literature. However, the finding related to relationship and happiness
in this paper contradicts the result in Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008) and Easterlin
(2004) that highlights marriage or union has a long-term positive impact on happiness.
The contradiction may be a reflection of the immaturity over handling relationships
by the young college students in India.
To summarise, some of the aspects of social life (family and friends) are positively
and significantly related to overall happiness along with the good job prospects of

4 Please see Appendix A.2.

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the current field of study. There is a negative relationship between happiness and
dwelling on past bad memories irrespective of the gender. Being in a relationship
for male respondents, and substance or alcohol abuse for female respondents are
negative covariates of their happiness. Also in this era of social networking and virtual
communities, the time spent on social networking sites by Indian college students has
come out to be insignificant covariate of happiness. These results show that there are
some differences between male and female outlook towards happiness.

Ranking Pattern % of Sub-components of Social Life and Personal

Situation

We will now focus on the ranking pattern in percentage (%) of sub-components of

sociallife and personal situation.
The ranking pattern percentages are derived from the responses obtained while fill-
ing up the questionnaire. 5 Each respondent assigned rankings to the sub-components
of social life and personal situation based on his/her preferences; the aggregate ranking
responses separately for male and female are expressed in percentage. As social life
has four sub-components, it has rank 1 to rank 4; whereas personal situation has rank
1 to rank 3 as it comprises of three sub-components. The section on questions related
to academic prospects does not have any sub-component.
Table 2 gives the ranking pattern for subcomponents of social life. We observe
that among subcomponents of social life 56.5% of the male students assign family
rank 1, 33.1% of them assign friends rank 1; whereas among female students, 35.2%
assign family rank 1 compared to 55.5% who assign friends rank 1. Out of the sample
of 449 students, 273 students consider family as the most important component of
their social life followed by 132 students who value friends as the most important
component of their social life, and only 44 students consider relationship or social
networking as the most important component. The results summarised are a reflection
of the traditional Indian culture where for almost all Indians the family is the most
important social unit. After family, friends are important to both male and female
students, and campus life and social networking are found to be not very important.
Chadda and Sinha Deb (2013) mentioned, “Unlike the western society, which puts the
impetus on “individualism”, the Indian society is “collectivistic” in that it promotes
interdependence and co-operation, with the family forming the focal point of this
social structure. The Indian and Asian families are, therefore, far more involved in
caring of its members.”
Now if we look at Table 3, we find that among subcomponents of personal life
50% of the male students assign physical and mental health (comprises of overthink-
ing unsatisfying memories, physical health and addiction to tobacco/alcohol) rank 1,
39.1% of them assign financial situation (satisfaction with pocket money and fam-
ily’s economic situation) rank 1 and only 10.9% assign leisure rank 1 whereas among
female students 55.9% assign physical and mental health rank 1, 24.6% assign leisure
rank 1 and 19.5% of them assign financial situation rank 1. So it is noted that among

5 Please see the questionnaire (Appendix A.1).

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J. Quant. Econ.

Table 2 Ranking pattern % for sub-components of social life

Male Female

Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4 Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4

(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)

Family 56.5 26.2 8.0 9.3 35.2 54.7 3.7 6.4

Friends 33.1 50.5 10.6 5.8 55.5 26.4 15.1 3
Relationship 8.4 20.1 56.2 15.3 5.7 12.5 61.2 20.6
Social networking 2.0 3.2 25.2 69.6 3.6 6.4 20 70

Table 3 Ranking pattern % for sub-components of personal situation

Male Female

Rank 1 (%) Rank 2 (%) Rank 3 (%) Rank 1 (%) Rank 2 (%) Rank 3 (%)

Physical and 50 25.5 24.5 55.9 19.5 24.6

mental
health
Leisure 10.9 40.9 48.2 24.6 33.6 41.8
Financial 39.1 33.6 27.3 19.5 46.9 33.6
situation

all subcomponents of personal situation, physical and mental health is most impor-
tant for male and female students both. Female students derive more happiness from
leisure than financial situation; while for male students happiness from sound financial
situation contributes more to happiness compared to happiness from leisure.

Relationship Between Income and Overall Happiness

Various researchers present different results concerning the influence of income on

happiness. From the summary statistics, we observed that the average level of hap-
piness marginally increases as income increases. 6 To understand whether overall
happiness is significantly related to income, regression analysis is conducted by creat-
ing dummy variables for income classes along with dummies for gender and dummies
for some of the aspects of social life, personal situation, and academic prospects.
We observe from the regression results in Table 1 that none of the estimated coeffi-
cients of income class dummies is statistically significant for the entire, male or female
samples. Thus, regression analysis shows that change in income class does not have a
significant impact on overall happiness for students aged between 18 and 24 years. The
result is also confirmed using a Z-test for our large sample. The results obtained from
the Z-tests summarised in Appendix A.4 reveals one of the most important findings of
our analysis—mean overall happiness does not vary across different income classes.

6 See Appendix A.2.

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 J. Quant. Econ.

Regarding the impact of absolute income on happiness, Kahneman et al. (2006)

in their study explained that high-income individuals are associated with no greater
happiness, on average, but with slightly higher tension and stress. Blanchflower and
Oswald (2004), Easterlin (1995) and Frey and Stutzer (2002) show in their studies that
richer individuals reported higher happiness in the United States. Di Tella et al. (2003)
show in their research that happiness equations are monotonically increasing in income
using the data of Europe and America from the 1970s to 1990s. The studies of Oswald
(1997) and Diener (2003) reveal that within countries income matters to happiness.
However, several studies (Blanchflower and Oswald 2002; Myers 2000; Kenny 1999)
have identified that per-capita income in countries like the United States, the United
Kingdom, Belgium and Japan, has risen sharply in recent decades whereas average
happiness has stayed “virtually constant” or has even declined over the same period.
Easterlin (1974) found very little if any, relationship between increases in per capita
income and average happiness levels across countries and over time. On an average,
wealthier countries (as a group) are happier than poor ones (as a group); happiness
seems to rise with income up to a point, but not beyond it. In the context of the
developing economy, two studies are found. Knight et al. (2007) estimate happiness
functions in rural China using the concept of subjective well-being. Lakshmanasamy
(2010) shows that in India money does influence the well-being of individuals and
relative income largely affects individual’s life satisfaction, but an increase in absolute
income beyond a certain threshold level may not bring more happiness. The analyses
of this paper confirm that happiness of students does not increase due to an increase in
income. So the result obtained in this paper contradicts some of the existing results in
the related literature and reveals that for Indian students of aged 18–24 years of most
metropolitan cities, income class that they belong to does not influence their overall
happiness.

Level of Happiness Across Gender

Few of the existing surveys conducted at macro level reveal that in present times
males are on an average happier than females (Stevenson and Wolfers 2009; Brooks
2013). However, the studies by Graham and Chattopadhyay (2012) and Tiefenbach and
Kohlbacher (2013) find women to be happier than men for macro-level data in some
countries like Japan. Indian suicide data reveals that men are more suicide-prone than
women. Thus, the association between happiness and gender is found to vary across
the countries and age-groups.
By looking at summary statistics in Appendix A.2, it appears that there is hardly
much difference between the average level of overall happiness of male and female
college students. We further observe from the regression results in Table 1 that esti-
mated coefficients of gender dummy are statistically insignificant for the entire, male
or female samples. To confirm this result, the Z-test is used. The results of the Z-test
are summarized in the Appendix A.5. From the results of testing of hypothesis, it is
confirmed that there is no significant level of difference in the mean level of happiness
across gender.

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J. Quant. Econ.

Conclusion

We had set out to answer the following questions in this research paper: Whether and
to what extent happiness of a student is significantly related to the aspects of his/her
social life such as time spent with family, friends, being in a relationship, and logging
into social networking sites frequently; academic factors such as job prospects of the
chosen field of study and academic environment; also to other personal factors such as
health, dwelling on bad memories, addiction to tobacco/alcohol/banned substances.
Further, we examined—is happiness of a student significantly related to income and
gender?
To address our research questions, we have conducted regression analysis (OLS
and OLOGIT) and conclude that time spent with family and friends, job prospects of
the chosen field of study are positive covariates of a student’s happiness. On the other
hand, being in a relationship is negatively related to the happiness of male students,
and addiction to tobacco/alcohol/banned substances is negatively associated with the
happiness of female respondents. Overthinking on bad memories is adversely related
to the happiness of both male and female respondents.
Indian students, in general, come from close-knit family and family members are
emotionally interdependent. Preference towards family is the driving force behind the
inclination towards social life. For generations, India has had a tradition of the joint
family system, but with urbanisation, India has witnessed a break up of traditional
joint families into nuclear families. Still students’ are more inclined to spend time
with their families. Also, for the college or university students, association with friends
is an essential part of life. The negative connection between happiness and being in
a relationship may be due to the young age-group of the respondents (18–24 years)
when most of them are immature to handle a relationship. We have observed that social
networking is not a significant aspect of social life. This finding is quite surprising
given the demographics of our sample and the increasing amount of time students
spend on social networking sites in recent times. However, it does show us that no
matter how attractive the virtual world may seem, there is little that can substitute a
social life in the real world. Findings of this paper further show that for the entire
sample, overall happiness is significantly related to future job prospect of the chosen
field of study with the highest positive coefficient. India is known to have one of the
largest young populations in the world with almost 46% of the total population are aged
less than 24 years. The demographic feature of India indicates that students during
their higher studies know that they have to get a good job, for sustaining themselves
and their family. Since India is densely populated with youth population, one must face
fierce competition for getting a good job. Therefore, it is evident that job prospect is
positively related to happiness. On the other side, overthinking bad memories is most
significantly and negatively related to happiness. Another result that is obtained in this
paper is that there is no significant difference in the average level of overall happiness
between male and female students. This was first observed in the primary analysis
of our field survey results, later confirmed using a statistical test of hypothesis and
running a regression on the male dummy. So even though male and female students
assess the various aspects of their life differently, their overall happiness, in general,
is not too different.

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 J. Quant. Econ.

Statistical tests of hypotheses, as well as regression analysis, have been used to

determine that happiness of a student is not significantly related to income. Regression
results show that income and happiness are not significantly associated. Statistical tests
of hypotheses have been conducted to confirm the above results. Tests of hypotheses
show us that there are no significant differences between the average levels of overall
happiness of students belonging to different income classes. The relationship between
income and happiness is one of great interest as many want to believe that money can
buy happiness. However, this study on Indian students shows that this does not hold
true. Income has little or no role to play in overall happiness of Indian students mostly
from metropolitan cities. However, this does not imply that income does not matter at
all; it merely tells us more money does not necessarily mean more happiness.
Easterlin (1974) is one which can shed some light on our results. In the mid-1970s,
Richard Easterlin shows that although successive generations of people were more
affluent than their parents and grandparents, on an average, they were not getting any
happier. He observed that even though within a society, rich people tend to be happier
than poor people, affluent societies were not significantly happier than poor societies
in a time series analysis.
This paper is subject to few limitations. Due to the shortage of time, our sample
size is limited to 449 sample units only. We have not checked for bi-way causality.
For instance, even though we found out that aspects of a student’s social life, job
prospects, and aspects of the personal situation such as overthinking on bad memories
and substance/alcohol abuse issues are significantly related to happiness, we have not
checked if the level of happiness contributes to these factors as well. It might so happen
that a happy person has a more active social life, better job prospects, and favourable
personal situation. Also besides the chosen explanatory factors, there might be other
factors that have not been accounted for such as genetics, attitude, respondent’s state
of mind while filling in the questionnaire, etc. There are several recent studies where
positive attitude emerges as a significant covariate of personal happiness (Mohanty
2009, 2014). Our study does not have access to the data on the respondent’s attitude.
Thus, we have not been able to incorporate attitude as an explanatory variable into our
analysis. Despite these limitations, this paper attempts to address some questions in
the context of India which have not been dealt with substantially in the pre-existing
literature.

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J. Quant. Econ.

Appendix A.1

A Survey On The Happiness Of Young Adults

Section 0:
Gender: M/F ______ Age: ______ Department:
College/ University: ___________________________________________
Education: Family Size:
Family Income (monthly): below Rs 10,000 Rs 10,000- Rs 25,000
Rs 25,000- Rs 50,000 Rs 50,000- Rs 1, 00,000 above Rs 1, 00,000

Section 1:
1*. I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am agree/ partly agree/ disagree
2. I feel that life is very rewarding agree/ partly agree/ disagree
3. I have warm feelings towards almost everyone agree/ partly agree/ disagree
4*. I am not particularly optimistic about the futures agree/ partly agree/ disagree
5. I find most things amusing agree/ partly agree/ disagree
6*. I don’t think that the world is a good place agree/ partly agree/ disagree
7. I am very happy agree/ partly agree/ disagree
8*. I feel that I am not especially in control of my life agree/ partly agree/ disagree
9*. I don’t have a particular sense of meaning and purpose
in my life agree/ partly agree/ disagree
10. I feel I have a great deal of energy agree/ partly agree/ disagree
11*. I do not have fun with other people agree/ partly agree/ disagree
12*. I don’t feel particularly healthy agree/ partly agree/ disagree

13. Life is good. agree/ partly agree/ disagree

Section 2:
1. The quality time I spend with my family is fulfilling agree/ disagree
2. I have family member(s) I can rely on agree/ disagree
3. I enjoy spending time with my friend(s) agree/ disagree
4. I have friend(s) I can rely on agree/ disagree
5. I am presently in a relationship Yes/ No
6. I login to social networking sites frequently: Yes/No
Rank these 1-4 according to their importance in making you happy (1- most important, 4- least)
Family (Q.1-2) ____ Friends (Q.3-4) ____
Relationship (Q.5) _____ Social Networking (Q. 6) _____
Section 3:
1. I am satisfied with my performance in my discipline agree/ disagree
2. I am satisfied with the future prospects of my chosen field agree/ disagree

3.. I am satisfied with the academic environment of my educational institute agree/ disagree
Section 4:
1. I overthink about my bad past memories Yes/No
2. I have some major chronic or recurring health problem/disability Yes/ No
3. I am addicted to tobacco/ alcohol/ banned substances Yes/ No
4. I have time to fit in everything I want to do agree/disagree
5. I am satis ed with my family’s economic situation agree/ disagree
Rank these 1-3 according to their importance in making you happy (1- most important, 3- least)
Mental & physical health (Q.1-3) ______ Leisure (Q.4) _____
Financial situation (Q.5) _________
Notes:
1. Section 1:Agree = 2, partly agree =1, disagree = 0
2. Section 2, 3, and 4: Agree (or, Yes) = 1, disagree (or, No) = 0
3. Section 1: Question numbers marked with * refer to reverse marking scheme, ie.
agree = 0, partly agree = 1, disagree = 2
4. Section 1: Overall happiness
Section 2: Aspects of social life
Section 3: Aspects of academic environment & prospects
Section 4: Aspects of personal situation

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 J. Quant. Econ.

Appendix A.2

Overview of the sample

Below Rs. Rs. 10,000 Rs. Rs. 25,000 Rs. Rs. 50,000–Rs. Above Rs.
10,000 25,000 50,000 1,00,000 1,00,000

Mean overall 16.58,333 16.61667 16.6729 16.84286 17.23016

happiness
Standard 3.396745 4.528971 4.131736 3.93887 4.12051
deviation

All Male Female

Mean overall happiness 16.85301 17.1048 16.59091

Standard deviation 4.095484 3.809893 4.366321

Appendix A.3

Breusch-Pagan/Cook-Weisberg test for heteroskedasticity

Ho: Constant variance | Variables: Fitted values of overall happiness
Overall sample Male sample regression Female sample
regression regression

Chi square value 0.03 0.07 0.02

Prob > Chi square 0.8676 0.7892 0.8772

Ramsey RESET test using powers of the fitted values of overall happiness
Ho: Model has no omitted variables
Overall sample Male sample regression Female sample
regression regression

F Value 0.62 0.16 0.92

Prob > F 0.6028 0.9202 0.433

Homoscedasticity holds and model specifications are correct for three OLS regres-
sion equations.

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J. Quant. Econ.

Appendix A.4

Test of significance of difference between mean happiness of students across income

classes: (at 1% level of significance)

Mean level of happiness Hypotheses Decision Significant level of

of a student belonging to difference in the mean
level of happiness
across income classes

Below Rs. 10,000 (Ma ) H0 :Ma  Mb We fail to reject the null NO

and Rs. 10,000–Rs. Ha :Ma < Mb hypothesis
25,000 (Mb )
Below Rs. 10,000 (Ma ) H0 :Ma  Mc We fail to reject the null NO
and Rs. 25,000–Rs. Ha :Ma < Mc hypothesis
50,000 (Mc )
Below Rs. 10,000 (Ma ) H0 :Ma  Md We fail to reject the null NO
and Rs. 50,000–Rs. Ha :Ma < Md hypothesis
1,00,000 (Md )
Below Rs. 10,000 (Ma ) H0 :Ma  Me We fail to reject the null NO
and above Rs. 1,00,000 Ha :Ma < Me hypothesis
(Me )
Rs. 10,000–Rs. 25,000 H0 :Mb  Mc We fail to reject the null NO
(Mb ) and Rs. Ha :Mb < Mc hypothesis
25,000–Rs. 50,000 (Mc )
Rs. 25,000–Rs. 50,000 H0 :Mc  Md We fail to reject the null NO
(Mc ) and Rs. Ha :Mc < Md hypothesis
50,000–Rs. 1,00,000
(Md )
Rs. 50,000–Rs. 1,00,000 H0 :Md  Me We fail to reject the null NO
(Md ) and above Rs. Ha :Md < Me hypothesis
1,00,000 (Me )

Appendix A.5

Test of significance of difference between mean happiness of male students and that
of female students: (at 1% level of significance)
Hypotheses:
Null hypothesis: H0 :Mm  Mf
Against alternative hypothesis: Ha :Mm > Mf
Here, Mm represents the mean level of happiness for males and Mf represents the
mean level of happiness for females.

Variable Number of observations Mean of overall Sum of squares

happiness

Male 229 17.1048  Xm 14.51528  Sm 2

Female 220 16.59091  Xf 19.06476  Sf 2

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 J. Quant. Econ.

Our alternative hypothesis implies that this is a one tailed test. At 1% level of
significance, the critical region is Zcritical ≥ 2.33. The value of test statistic (Zobserved
 1.379359) does not lie in the critical region. As a result, we fail to reject the null
hypothesis at 1% level of significance.

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