Abstract

There is continual debate focusing on government’s role in determining the well-being of its citizens. Should governments expand the generosity of welfare-state policies or reduce their involvement? This question is especially appropriate in less-developed countries with fewer resources to invest. This paper’s findings show welfare-state policy is positively associated with life satisfaction around the world, and the relation holds in subsamples of developed, transition, and less-developed countries. The relation is of similar magnitude as the relation for GDP pc, and is more significant than the relation for quality of governance. The results are based on cross-sectional regressions including 104 countries over the period 2005–2012. Life satisfaction data are from the Gallup World Poll, and welfare-state policy is measured using public social protection expenditures from the International Labor Organization. Previous empirical studies support a positive life satisfaction welfare-state policy relation, but the samples contained few, if any, less-developed countries.