ARE VIRTUOUS PEOPLE HAPPIER? EVIDENCE FROM ITALY

The strength of norms of civic cooperation are known to be important for measurable macroeconomic outcomes, such us GNP and investment growth. At the individual level, lack of civic virtue or selfishness in interpersonal relationships is often found to be negatively correlated with happiness. In this paper we provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between happiness and civic virtue using data from the Survey of Italian Households' Income and Wealth. Besides regression results confirming the positive correlation between civic behavior and happiness, we provide novel empirical evidence of a positive correlation between happiness and selfish/asocial behavior. Our findings indicate that people with extreme views, either in the civic direction or in the selfish one, are happier than the others. In addition, the two effects are of a different order of magnitude and we find that the effect on happiness of having a selfish attitude is greater than the pro-social one.