What is the correlation between objective indexes and aggregated self-report measures of life satisfaction? The Better Life Index and other indices seek to overcome the limitations of GDP in assessing social progress. They provide a composite score with which to rank nations on a range of indicators such as safety, environment, health, employment, economic activity, and so on.

Other researchers obtain self-report measures of happiness of life satisfaction (e.g., Diener's popluar Satisfaction with Life Scale). With care these scales can be aggregated over individuals to form a group-level measurement. For example, with careful sampling, a nation level estimate can be obtained.

I'm curious about these things:


What is the correlation between aggregated self-report measures and objective indexes of life satisfaction?
What explanation is provided for the size of the correlation in terms of how they are similar or different in what they measure?
The World Values Survey seems like a good starting point for examining nation level life satisfaction and then correlating it with other indicators.

Diener (2000) summarises this research on


  mean levels  of life satisfaction for selected nations from the  World
  Values  Survey  (World  Values  Study  Group,  1994),  conducted  with
  representative  samples  of  approximately  1,000 respondents  per 
  nation  between  1990  and  1993.  The  purchasing  power  parity 
  figure  is  the  percentage  of  purchasing power (based  on a
  standard  "basket"  of goods) that  the  average person  in  each 
  country  can  buy  with  his  or her  yearly  income,  compared  with 
  the  average  purchasing  power  of individuals  in  the  United 
  States.  The  correlation  between  mean  purchasing  power  income 
  and  mean  life  satisfaction  was  .62  across  all  nations  in  the
  survey.  The  finding that wealthier  nations have higher levels of
  reported  well-being  has  been replicated  several  times  (see 
  Diener  &amp;  Suh,  1999).  One  reason  that  wealthy  nations  may  be 
  hap-  pier is that they are more likely to fulfill basic human needs 
  for  food,  shelter,  and  health,  as  well  as  to have  better 
  human-fights  records  (Diener  et  al.,  1995).


OECD Life Index

I performed a quick analysis of data from up to 36 countries from the OECD Better Life Index Site. You can download the datafile used directly from http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/. The R code, data file, and output of this draft set of analyses is available here, along with a list of the included countries.

I obtained the following correlations between other variables and self-reported life satisfaction (r is correlation; n is number of countries):

##                                               r  n
## Rooms.per.person                           0.70 30
## Personal.earnings                          0.67 34
## Employment.rate                            0.63 36
## Households.income                          0.59 32
## Water.quality                              0.59 36
## Long.term.unemployment.rate               -0.58 34
## Self.reported.health                       0.58 34
## Life.expectancy                            0.57 36
## Dwellings.with.basic.facilities            0.54 32
## Social.network                             0.50 36
## Time.devoted.to.leisure.and.personal.care  0.43 21
## Household.financial.wealth                 0.41 31
## Voter.turn.out                             0.36 36
## Educational.attainment                     0.22 35
## Students..skills                           0.21 36
## Air.pollution                             -0.18 36
## Housing.expenditure                        0.12 32
## Years.in.education                         0.12 35
## Consultation.on.rule.making                0.12 35
## Employees.working.very.long.hours         -0.09 33
## Job.security                               0.08 32
## Homicide.rate                             -0.07 36
## Assault.rate                              -0.02 36


References


Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American psychologist, 55, 34.
Diener,  E.,  Diener,  M.,  &amp;  Diener,  C.  (1995).  Factors  predicting  the 
subjective  well-being  of  nations.  Journal  of Personality  and  Social 
Psychology,  69,  851-864.
Diener,  E.,  &amp;  Sub,  E.  (1999).  Societies we  live  in: International  compar- 
isons. In  D.  Kahneman, E.  Diener,  &amp;  N.  Schwarz  (Eds.),  Well-being: 
The foundations  of  hedonic  psychology  (pp.  434-452).  New  York: 
Russell Sage  Foundation. 
World Values Study Group. (1994).  World Values Survey,  1981-1994  and 
1990-1993  [Computer file,  ICPSR  version].  Ann Arbor,  MI:  Institute 
for  Social  Research.