Table 1 Definition and Source
Variable Name | Definition | Source/s |
|---|---|---|
Panel A: Control Variables | ||
 Age | Weighted average age of the respondents | European Values Study and World Values Survey |
 Culture zone | The Culture zones are: 1. Reformed West, 2. New West, 3. Old West, 4. Returned West, 5. Orthodox East, 6. Indic East, 7. Islamic East, 8. Sinic East, 9. Latin America, and 10. Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries are classified based on their technological and democratic achievements | Rising Freedom by Christian Welzel |
 Economic status | Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars | World Development Indicators |
 Education | Education index is an average of mean years of schooling (of adults) and expected years of schooling (of children), both expressed as an index obtained by scaling with the corresponding maxima | United Nations (UNDP) |
 Effectiveness of the government | Government Effectiveness captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies. Estimate gives the country’s score in units of a standard normal distribution ranging from -2.5 to 2.5 | World Development Indicators |
 GDP per capita | GDP per capita is gross domestic product divided by midyear population. Data are in constant 2010 U.S. dollars | World Development Indicators |
 Marital status | Ratio of respondents who are in a relationship (married and living together as married) over those who are not in a relationship (divorced, separated, widowed, single/never married, divorced/separated/widowed) | European Values Study and World Values Survey |
 Political position | Weighted average of respondents self-positioning in political scale. Possible responses ranging from 1 = left (liberal) to 10 = right (conservative) | European Values Study and World Values Survey |
 Sex ratio | Ratio of female respondents over male respondents | European Values Study and World Values Survey |
 Unemployment | Unemployment refers to the share of the labour force that is without work but available for and seeking employment | World Development Indicators |
Panel B: Universal Health Coverage Indexes | ||
 Out-of-pocket expenditure (Financial protection dimension) | Share of out-of-pocket payments of total current health expenditures. Out-of-pocket payments are spending on health directly out-of-pocket by households | World Development Indicators |
 Basic hospital access (Service coverage dimension) | Hospital beds (per 1,000 people) | World Health Organization |
 Full child immunization (Service coverage dimension) | Child immunization, Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus (DPT), measures the percentage of children ages 12–23 months who received DPT vaccinations before 12 months or at any time before the survey. A child is considered adequately immunized against DPT after receiving three doses of vaccine | World Health Organization and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund |
 Prevention and treatment of raised blood glucose (Service coverage dimension) | Percent of defined population with fasting glucose ≥ 7.0 mmol/l or history of diagnosis with diabetes or use of insulin or oral hypoglycaemic drugs (crude estimate) | World Health Organization |
 Tuberculosis treatment (Service coverage dimension) | Treatment success rate | World Health Organization |
Panel C: Outcome Variables | ||
 Life satisfaction (standard deviation) | Life Satisfaction data are expressed as values ranging from 1 = dissatisfied to 10 = satisfied. Data is based on the country and wave/period | World Values Survey and European Values Study |
 Gini coefficient | Income inequality measure in the market (pre-tax, pre-transfer) | The Standardized World Income Inequality Database |