Leiden University Student Repository

Zwarts, Bowy 2022

Does money really make people happy? A European Union country-based analysis of EU-funding

Master thesis | Public Administration (MSc)

open access

The European Union promotes quality of life and happiness among all EU-citizens. This aim is partly pursued through EU-funding for different countries. At the same time, there are rising levels of...Show moreThe European Union promotes quality of life and happiness among all EU-citizens. This aim is partly pursued through EU-funding for different countries. At the same time, there are rising levels of discontent among many EU-countries which raises doubts if the EU actually increases happiness. This paper focuses on the aspect of EU-funding and studies the effect of EU-funding on happiness through the research question: ‘What is the effect of EU-funding towards a country on happiness among EU-citizens?’. This paper is using panel data regressions with fixed effects from 2014 to 2020 over 27 different countries to find results. The results of this paper suggest that there is no general effect of EU-funding on happiness among all EU-countries as insufficient proof of an association is found. This paper does find an interesting result when testing EU-countries which joined the European Union before and from 2004 separately. Different parts of EU-funding have different effects on different EU-countries. For example, some parts of EU-funding have a positive association with countries which joined the European Union from 2004 and a negative association with countries which joined the European Union before 2004. This means that the differences between EU-countries change how their happiness is influenced by different drivers.Show less