Relations of Natural Resources Wealth and Happiness (Case Study of Lower Middle Income Countries)

Abstract

The resource curse is a widely-studied concept that connects countries with natural resources wealth with low economic performance. Meanwhile, separately the studies of happiness that correlate economic growth with increase in happiness are emerging. The combination of the two (resource curse and happiness), however, has not yet been extensively researched and is, therefore, a relatively new area of studies. While attempting to investigate the relations between natural resources wealth and happiness, this paper explores this very issue. It does so by employing linear regression analysis to determine the correlation coefficient between Natural Capital Index and Happiness Score for 35 countries of lower middle income status, annually from 2017 to 2022. To achieve verifiable results, the comparison against a more-established branch of study (which is correlation between natural resources wealth and national income level) is done. The results show that while there is a significant correlation between natural resource wealth and national income level, the opposite is true for correlations between natural resource wealth and happiness.