<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In this paper, we contribute to the debate on life-satisfaction gap between the citizens of post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia and their highly developed OECD counterparts, by examining the influence of de jure and de facto respect for empowerment rights. We mainly focus on the measure of rights protection called de jure - de facto rights protection gap. The empowerment rights included in the analysis are: the freedom of association, the freedom of expression, the freedom of religion, the freedom of foreign movement. Our results imply that government’s respect for these rights plays the role in diminishing happiness gap. We base the conclusions on an empirical study conducted on the sample of more than 59,000 observations. The data used for the study consist of World Values Survey database (waves 3–6) and a number of socio-economic indicators for 44 countries.</p></abstract>

In this paper, we contribute to the debate on life-satisfaction gap between the citizens of post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia and their highly developed OECD counterparts, by examining the influence of de jure and de facto respect for empowerment rights. We mainly focus on the measure of rights protection called de jure - de facto rights protection gap. The empowerment rights included in the analysis are: the freedom of association, the freedom of expression, the freedom of religion, the freedom of foreign movement. Our results imply that government’s respect for these rights plays the role in diminishing happiness gap. We base the conclusions on an empirical study conducted on the sample of more than 59,000 observations. The data used for the study consist of World Values Survey database (waves 3–6) and a number of socio-economic indicators for 44 countries.

Empowerment Rights and Happiness Gap in Post-socialist Countries

Central European Economic Journal

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"Empowerment Rights and Happiness Gap in Post-socialist Countries"}

In this paper, we contribute to the debate on life-satisfaction gap between the citizens of post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia and their highly...

Empowerment Rights and Happiness Gap in Post-socialist Countries

Published Online: Oct 26, 2019

Page range: 270 - 295

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ceej-2018-0023

Keywords
empowerment rights, economic analysis of human rights, happiness gap, de jure and de facto rights protection

© 2018 A. Lewczuk, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Empowerment Rights and Happiness Gap in Post-socialist Countries

Published Online: Oct 26, 2019

Page range: 270 - 295

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ceej-2018-0023

Keywordsempowerment rights, economic analysis of human rights, happiness gap, de jure and de facto rights protection

© 2018 A. Lewczuk, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
empowerment rights, economic analysis of human rights, happiness gap, de jure and de facto rights protection