Inequality of happiness is the degree to which citizens in a country differ in how much they like the life they live.
This difference is expressed in the standard deviation (SD) of responses to single questions about happiness in general population surveys. This concept and the statistic are discussed in Kalmijn, W. & Veenhoven, R. Measuring inequality of happiness in nations. In search for proper statistics.
| Variable | Measure of happiness: type and code | SPSS variable code | Nation | Since | Source World Database of Happiness (WDH) Distributional Findings in Nations‘Transformed scores# |
| SD Happiness | 3-step, all variants | sd-hl3_us | USA | 1947 | WDH table 111a |
| 3-step, O-HL/c/sq/v/3/aa | sd-hl3a_us | USA | 1947 | WDH table 111a | |
| 3-step, O-HL/g/sq/v/3/d | sd-hl3d_us | USA | 1975 | WDH table 111a | |
| 4-step, all variants | sd-hl4_us | USA | 1946 | WHD table 111b | |
| SD Life satisfaction | 2-step, O-SLP/g/sq/v/2/b | sd-ls2_us | USA | 1979 | WDH table 121a |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_be | Belgium | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_de | Germany (re-united) | 1990 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_dee | Germany (former East) | 1990 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_dew | Germany (former West) | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_dk | Denmark | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_eu8* | EU-8 | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_fr | France | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_gr | Greece | 1981 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_ie | Iereland | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_it | Italy | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_jp | Japan | 1958 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_lu | Luxemburg | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_nl | Netherlands | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_pt | Portugal | 1985 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_sp | Spain | 1985 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4/b | sd-ls4_uk | UK (Great Britain) | 1973 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLL/u/sq/v/4 variants a,e,f | sd-ls4a_jp | Japan | 1958 | WDH table 121c | |
| 4-step, O-SLW/u/sq/v/4/e | eqls4b_jp | Japan | 1992 | WDH table 121c | |
| 5-step, O-SLW/u/sq/v/5 variants a,g,k,l | sd-ls5_jp | Japan | 1978 | WDH table 121d | |
| 4+5 step, mean eqls4_jp and eqls5_jp | sd-ls45_jp | Japan | 1958 | WDH table 121c+d | |
| SD Best-Worst (Cantril ladder) | 11-step, C-BW/c/sq/l/11/a | sd-bw11_us | USA | 1959 | WDH table 131b |
* Weighted average: EU-8 = Belgium x 0.037423 + Denmark x 0,19263 + France x 0,213337 + West-Gernamy x 0,243826 + Italy x 0,211549 + Luxemburg x 0,0001503 + Netherlands x 0,056975 + UK x 0,216118
# Standard deviations transformed to response range 0-10. Method explained in the Introductory text to the Collection of Distributional Findings in Nations, Chapter 7, section 7.3.3 ‘Converting mean scores of equivalent items’.
Same variable in data file ‘States of Nations’ Inequality of happiness