Life Satisfaction: Insights from the World Values Survey

Abstract

This paper explores enduring influences on life satisfaction using empirical analysis of World Values Survey (WVS) data (four versions of the most comprehensive dataset, namely 1.6, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0). Five significant values emerged—financial satisfaction, happiness, freedom of choice, health, and democracy. Through rigorous selection processes and various statistical techniques, a subset of three determinants resulted, along with consecrated socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, marital status, social class, and settlement size. Advanced methodologies such as feature selection, random and non-random cross-validations, overfitting removal, collinearity and reverse causality checks, and different regressions served to evaluate and validate robust models. Nomograms helped to predict life satisfaction probabilities. The findings contribute to understanding life satisfaction dynamics and offer practical insights for future research and policy.

Keywords

• life satisfaction
• feature selection
• cross-validation
• overfitting
• collinearity
• reverse causality