Mohamed Chaouch, Thanasis Stengos
arXiv 13 Dec 2025 · Econometrics
arXiv:2512.12352 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
This paper investigates the nexus between subjective well-being and sustainability, proxied by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index, using cross-country data from 126 nations in 2022. While prior research has highlighted a positive association between happiness and sustainable development, existing approaches largely rely on linear regressions or correlation-based measures that mask distributional heterogeneity, multicollinearity, and potential nonlinear dependence. To address these limitations, we employ a two methodological framework combining Graphical Lasso, and Quantile-on-Quantile Regression (QQR). The Graphical Lasso identifies a direct conditional link between happiness and sustainability after controlling for governance, income, and life expectancy, with a partial correlation of about 0.21. On the other hand, QQR reveals heterogeneous effects across the joint distribution: sustainability gains are positively associated with happiness for low-happiness but high-sustainability countries, negatively associated in high-happiness but low-sustainability contexts, and essentially neutral elsewhere. These findings suggest that the happiness-sustainability link is modest, asymmetric, and context-dependent, underscoring the importance of moving beyond mean-based regressions. From a policy perspective, our results highlight that institutional quality, income, and demographic factors remain the dominant drivers of both happiness and sustainability, while the interplay between the two dimensions is most pronounced in distributional extremes.
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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Friedman, Jerome and Hastie, Trivor and Tibshirani, Robert (2007) Sparse inverse covariance estimation with the graphical lasso | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 2 | Sim, Nicholas and Zhou, Haibin (2015) Quantile-on-quantile regression: A new approach in quantile regression | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 3 | Akerlof, George A and Shiller, Robert J (2015) Phishing for phools: The economics of manipulation and deception | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 4 | Aksoy, Fadime and Bayram Arli, Nuran (2020) Evaluation of sustainable happiness with Sustainable Development Goals: Structural equation model approach | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 5 | Barrington-Leigh, Christopher (2016) Sustainability and well-being: A happy synergy | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 6 | Bartolini, Stefano (2014) Building sustainability through greater happiness | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 7 | Brülde, Bengt (2015) Well-being, happiness and sustainability | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 8 | Chen, Jianqing (2003) Inference of quantile regression models with varying coefficients | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel and Sachs, Jeffrey D. and Alejo, José L. and P… (2020) The SDGs and human well-being: a global analysis of synergies, trade-offs, and regional differences | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Dietz, Thomas and Rosa, Eugene A and York, Richard (2009) Environmentally efficient well-being: Rethinking sustainability as the relationship between human well-being and environmental i… | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 21 scored citations.