Three specifications have been used to provide three estimates of the reduction in well-being associated with gender-based discriminatory social institutions (see Table 4 columns 7,8 and 9). In equation 4, oc2 can be interpreted as the marginal effect, which corresponds to the country’s average level of subjective well-being changes when the SIGI changes from 0 to 1, holding all other variables in the equation constant (i.e. partial derivative). Given our linear approach, the higher the SIGI, the higher the decline in absolute life satisfaction7, with the highest reduction found in the Middle East and North African, sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries.