Subjective well-being and political participation: Empirical evidence from Ghana

A large, extant literature examines the effect of political factors on individual subjective well-being. These studies have treated political factors as a cause and subjective well-being as an effect. A sparse but growing literature now advances the argument that subjective well-being is a cause and voting or political participation an effect. In this paper we examine whether subjective well-being influences voting and political participation in Ghana. Using data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey in Ghana, we find that subjective well-being influences neither voting nor protest behavior.