Discussion Paper No. 923

WHY ARECABINET SUPPORTERS HAPPY?

Yoshiro Tsutsui
Shoko Yamane
Fumio Ohtake

January 2015

The Institute of Social and Economic Research
Osaka University
6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan

Why Are Cabinet Supporters Happy?
Yoshiro Tsutsui†
Shoko Yamane‡
Fumio Ohtake¶

Abstract
Using a monthly survey, this paper finds that supporters of the governing cabinet are
significantly happier than non-supporters throughout our sample period. We investigate
the reason and examine two hypotheses: 1) happy persons support the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party, and 2) supporters of any governing party tend to be happy. Oaxaca
decomposition analysis reveals that the difference in happiness is not attributable to thedifference of attributes and personalities, rejecting hypothesis 1). On the other hand, thehappiness of cabinet and anti-cabinet supporters was not significantly different after anelection in which the governing party was replaced, supporting hypothesis 2).
Keywords: happiness; cabinet supporter; Oaxaca decomposition; JapanJEL Classification numbers: I31; D72



An earlier version of this paper was presented at Monetary Economic Workshop (MEW). We
would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the participants for their comments. We would
like to acknowledge financial support from the Center of Excellence (COE) program at Osaka
University. We are also grateful to Mie Nakai for her excellent research assistance.
†
Faculty of Economics, Konan University, 8-9-1 Okamoto, Higashinada-ku, Kobe, 658-8501
JAPAN, Phone & Fax: +81-78-435-2920, e-mail: tsutsui@center.konan-u.ac.jp‡
Faculty of Economics, Kinki University, 3-4-1 Kowakae, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka, 577-8502,
JAPAN, Phone: +81-6-6721-2332; e-mail: syamane@kindai.ac.jp¶
Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, 6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki,
567-0047 Japan, e-mail: ohtake@iser.osaka-u.ac.jp, Phone: +81-6-6879-8572
1

1.

Introduction

It is well-known that political institutions and policies play an important role in thehappiness of nations. Frey and Stutzer have elucidated how democracy is important tohappiness, analyzing the political institutions in Switzerland (Frey and Stutzer 2002a,
Frey 2008). Recently, Bok opened up the field of the politics of happiness（Bok 2010).
Bok argues that policymakers should use happiness research and in policymaking, anddiscusses quality of government.
Some studies investigated whether election results make supporters of winningparties happy and those of losing parties unhappy (Gilbert et al. 1998, Wilson et al.
2003, Tsutsui et al. 2010, Kinari et al. 2014, Kimball et al. 2014). Results of thesestudies suggest that while election results affect supporters’ happiness, their happinessreturns to its original level in a few days.
We conducted a monthly survey over 32 months from August 2005 to March 2008,
and asked respondents about their happiness and party support. Using these data, thispaper reports that cabinet supporters and governing party supporters are happier thananti-cabinet people and non-governing party supporters. We then investigate the reason
for this fact. There are two possible channels: one is that cabinet supporters are happierbecause happy persons tend to become cabinet supporters, and the other is that those2

who support the current cabinet tend to become happy. This paper examines both ofthese hypotheses and finds that the latter hypothesis is more plausible.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we explain our survey andthe political situation of Japan during our observation period. In section 3, we report theresult that supporters of the cabinet and governing parties are happier. Section 4
examines the reason for this fact. Section 5 concludes.

2. Our survey and Japanese political parties
We conducted a monthly interview survey for 32 months from August 2005 to March
2008, asking more than 1000 respondents about their happiness, whether they support
the governing cabinet, their party support, and their attributes such as gender, age,education, and income. 1 Happiness is elicited in the following question:

Pleaseremember how you felt this week. How happy did you feel during this week?
Using a scale from 0-10 where “10” is “very happy” and “0” is “very unhappy,”
how do you rate your level of happiness? In addition, in July 2006 and February
2007, we asked respondents to evaluate their own personality. Using these data, wecheck whether happiness differs between supporters and non-supporters of cabinet and1

Income was not asked every month.
3

parties, and whether attributes and personality assessments differ between these groups.2
During these 32 months, three prime ministers administered Japan. These were
Junichiro Koizumi from August 2005 to September 2006, Shinzo Abe from September
2006 to September 2007, and Yasuo Fukuda from September 2007 to March 2008.
Among these, the Koizumi cabinet was a stable government, which ruled the country
for five and a half years beginning in April 2001. In September 2005, the month after
this survey started, Koizumi won a landslide victory in a famous election in which themain issue was postal privatization. In contrast, Abe and Fukuda were short-lived
administrations that lasted only one year each. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has
ruled in a coalition with the New Komeito party since 1999.3

3. Cabinet supporters are happierWe pool all the data for the 32 months and divide them into three groups: “support
cabinet”, “do not support cabinet”, and “don’t know,” and calculate the averagehappiness of these three groups. The results are presented in Table 1. Average happinessof the “support” group is 6.55, which substantially exceeds the 6.14 of “do not support”
group. The t-statistic of the test of equality of means between these groups is 19.2,

2
3

However, different respondents were selected every time, so that the data are not panel.
New Komeito changed its English name to Komeito in September 2014.
4which is highly significant (p=1.0×10-81).
This tendency is observed throughout the sample period. In Figure 1 we depict themeans of happiness of the “support” and “do not support” groups, with 95% confidence
intervals. The happiness of “support” group is larger throughout the period.4
In Table 2, we present the average happiness levels of the supporters of different
political parties. Similar to cabinet supporters, supporters of the governing parties tend
to be happier than supporters of the non-governing parties. The happiness of supportersof the LDP, a governing party, is 6.55, for supporters of New Komeito, a coalition party,
it is 6.48, for supporters of the Democratic Party Japan (DPJ), the largest non-governing
party, it is 6.33, and for supporters of the Japanese Communist Party and Social
Democratic Party, traditional non-governing parties, it is lower. Those who support noparty (non-affiliated) comprise 56% of all voters, and these report a very low happinessof 6.22. The t-statistic of a test for equality of means between LDP and DPJ supporters
is 6.51 (p=4.0×10-11), while the t-statistic between LDP and non-affiliated is 14.08(p=3.2×10-45).

4. Why are cabinet supporters happier?
4.1 Attributes and happiness4

However, the difference is less after the beginning of the Fukuda cabinet.
5

Why are cabinet supporters happier? Since the governing parties are the LDP and New
Komeito throughout the period, one possible hypothesis is that supporters of theseparties are those who have attributes that cause them to be happy. Many studies havefound that higher income and more education bring about higher happiness, thathappiness is U-shaped in age, and that females are happier than males (Easterlin 2001,
Frey and Stutzer 2002a,b, Clark 2007, Inglehart 1990, White 1992, Hellevik 2003,
Tsutsui 2010). Thus, supporters of both governing parties might have happy attributes,
e.g. higher income. In this subsection, we examine whether these attributes can explain
why cabinet supporters are happier.
We asked household income on a 12-point scale. Using median values of thesescales we calculate the average incomes of cabinet supporters and non-supporters.
These are 4937 thousand yen and 4947 thousand yen, respectively, which are very close.
The t-statistic of a test for equality of means is -0.14 and does not reject the null
(p=0.443).
For education, we asked respondents whether the highest level of school fromwhich they graduated was junior high school (1), high school (2), or university (3).
Calculating the mean, we find that mean education level of cabinet supporters is 2.155
and non-supporters is 2.235, so that non-supporters are more educated. The difference is6significant (t=-10.8, p=1.6×10-27). Therefore, education is not a reason why cabinet
supporters are happier.
While 52% of cabinet supporters are female, only 46% of non-supporters arefemale. The difference is significant (t=12.23, p=-1.25×10-34). This makes cabinet
supporters happier. However, as per the “do not know” group, females comprise 62%.
Thus, this female ratio cannot explain why cabinet supporters are happier than the “donot know” group.
The average age of cabinet supporters is 53.9 years, and for non-supporters 50.9
years. The difference is significant (t=16.3, p=4.2×10-60). Kurokawa and Ohtake (2013)
show that the happiness-age profile takes U-shape with a bottom in the 40’s, so thatdifferences in age partly explain why cabinet supporters are happier.
In sum, while the examinations in this subsection do not deny the possibility thatgender and age might be causes of the difference in happiness, income and education
would tend to make cabinet supporters unhappier.

4.2 Personality and happinessSupporters of LDP and New Komeito might have happier personalities. To examine thispossibility we asked respondents 15 questions about their personality in July 2006 and7February 2007. The fifteen personality characteristics we asked about were Sociable,
Moody, Methodical, Friendly, Warm, Pessimistic, Neurotic, Industrious, Curious,
Energetic, Careless, Modest, Daring, Have a sense of justice, and Egalitarian. For eachof these characteristics, we asked respondents to choose one from ”particularly true forme (4),” “somewhat true for me (3),” “doesn’t hold true so much for me (2),” and“doesn’t hold true at all for me (1).”In Figure 2, we show averages of each characteristic for cabinet supporters andnon-supporters. The figure reveals that cabinet supporters are more friendly, warm, andmodest, while non-supporters are more moody and curious. These characteristics differ
significantly at the 5% level.
How these personalities relate to happiness? Calculating the correlation
coefficient between them, we find that correlation with happiness is Friendly, 0.15,
Warm 0.16, Modest, 0.12, Moody -0.06, and Curious 0.13. Thus, except for Curious,
cabinet supporters have happy personalities and non-supporters have unhappy
personalities. Therefore, we cannot deny the possibility that cabinet supporters arehappier because the support group is comprised of people who tend to have happy
personality characteristics.

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4.3

Statistical analysis

The conclusion of the previous two subsections is not decisive. We find that some
attributes/personalities would tend to make cabinet supporters happier while somewould tend to make them unhappier. In this subsection, we try to clarify whether
attributes and personalities can explain the difference in happiness between cabinet
supporters and non-supporters. To this end we employ the method of Oaxaca
decomposition (Cotton 1988, Oaxaca and Ransom 1994). The difference in happinessbetween supporters and non-supporters can be attributed to a) the difference in the levelof variables (i.e. difference in explanatory variables of the regressions with the sample
of supporters and non-supporters including a constant term) and b) the difference in thesensitivity of variables on happiness (i.e. difference in coefficients).5
Let the mean happiness difference between the supporters and non-supportersbe:
𝐸(𝐻𝑠 ) − 𝐸(𝐻𝑁 )(1)where 𝐸(𝐻𝑠 ) denotes the expected value of happiness of the supporters and 𝐸(𝐻𝑁 )represents that of the non-supporters. Let 𝛽 ∗ be a nondiscriminatory parameter vector.
According to Neumark (1988), we adopted the coefficients from a pooled model over5

The difference in the constant term represents the difference in two groups that comes fromcharacteristics that are not included as explanatory variables.
9both groups as a nondiscriminatory parameter vector as 𝛽 ∗ .
Using such 𝛽 ∗ , we can decompose this happiness difference as𝐸(𝐻𝑆 ) − 𝐸(𝐻𝑁 ) = {𝐸(𝑋𝑆 ) − 𝐸(𝑋𝑁 )}′𝛽 ∗ + {𝐸(𝑋𝑆 )′ (𝛽𝑆 − 𝛽 ∗ ) + 𝐸(𝑋𝑁 )′ (𝛽 ∗ − 𝛽𝑁 )}(2)where XS (XN) denotes the vector of explanatory variables of the supporters(non-supporters) equation. The first term corresponds to a), and the second and the thirdterms to b). What we are interested in is the share of part a), which is explained by theattributes and personalities of the groups. If the share is large, this means that thedifference in happiness is explained by attributes and personalities between the groups.
We call a) “explained” and b) “unexplained”.
We employ male dummy, Age, 15 Personalities, and education as the
explanatory variables. We pool the responses in July 2006 and February 2007, andregress 11-point happiness over the explanatory variables. The number of observations
is 2363. The estimation results are presented in Table 3.

The estimated difference inhappiness between supporters and non-supporters is -0.257. Attributes, personalities,
and other characteristics (i.e. constant term) explain -0.056 of this, which is only 1/4 ofthe unexplained part (-0.201). Still, the explained part is significant at the 5% level.
We estimate the equation adding household income. In this case we only use the10July 2006 samples, since income is not available in the February 2007 data, so that the
number of observations falls to 724. The results are shown in Table 4. The difference inhappiness increases to -0.361. The explained part is -0.044, which is only 1/8 of theunexplained part (-0.316). In addition, it is not statistically significant (p=0.391).
These results suggest that the attributes and personalities of the groups do not
fully explain the fact that cabinet supporters are happier than non-supporters.

4.4 Happiness due to rule of favored party
The remaining hypothesis is that people are happy because they support the ruling party.
In other words, they are happy because their ideal policies are implemented. To examine
this hypothesis, it would be ideal to show that DPJ supporters were happier than LDP
supporters during September 2009 to December 2012, when the LDP lost power and
DPJ was the governing party. Unfortunately, our survey ended in March 2008, so thatthe data during the period when DPJ held power is not available. However, we
conducted a web survey for seven days before and after the voting day (August 30,2009) of the General Election in which the DPJ took the power. Although the LDP was
still the governing party in this period, we can infer the happiness of DPJ and LDP
supporters under the reign of DPJ because the DPJ was slated to take power soon.

11We conducted a web survey from August 27 to September 2 (seven days
including the voting day). Respondents were 1068 (male=486, female=582) eligible
voters from all over Japan. We asked respondents about what party they supported, andwhether they supported the Aso cabinet. 114 supported the cabinet, 669 did not support
it, 238 were indifferent, and 47 were uninterested.
Pooling the seven days of data, the total number of observations is 6408. The
average happiness of cabinet supporters and non-supporters is 6.119 and 6.124,
respectively. The null hypothesis of equal means is not rejected (t=-0.05, p=0.479).
However, since cabinet supporters became much more unhappy on August 31st, the day
after voting day, and non-supporters became happy, this day may be a special day(Kinari et al. 2014). When we omit the samples on 31st, supporters’ happiness is 6.196,
and non-supporters’ is 6.141; still, the difference is not significant (t=0.567, p=0.285).
These results indicate that happiness of supporters for the party that is slated to takepower rises compared with supporters of the losing party.
The happiness of LDP and DPJ supporters is 6.359 and 6.193, respectively, and
LDP supporters are significantly happier at the 5% level (t=2.20, p=0.014). Therefore,
based on party support data, our above conclusion is not confirmed. Even so, we shouldhave looked at happiness after the election results were known, because whether the

12

DPJ would take power was not actually decided before that time. If we use the datafrom August 31st to September 2nd, the happiness of LDP supporters is 6.18, and that of
DPJ supporters 6.10, so that they are not significantly different (p=0.24). If we delete
the data from 31st and use only the 1st and 2nd, happiness is 6.28 and 6.04, respectively,
and not significantly different at the 5% level (p=0.08). In sum, these results support
hypothesis 2) and suggest that supporters for ruling party become happier.

5. Conclusions
We demonstrated that supporters of the governing cabinet and governing parties arehappier, using a monthly survey from August 2005 to March 2008. Two hypotheses
were considered as to the cause of this result. The first is that cabinet supporters arebasically happy people, and the other is that people become happy if their supporting
party rules the country. To examine the first hypothesis we utilize attributes andpersonalities of the respondents and conduct Oaxaca decomposition to see if differencesin attributes/personalities explain the difference in happiness between cabinet supporters
and non-supporters. We found that attributes/personalities explain only 1/8 of thedifference in happiness, denying that the entire happiness difference is due simply to thefact that happy people become cabinet supporters.

13

To examine the alternative hypothesis that cabinet supporters become happier, we
utilized daily survey data for the seven days before and after the General Election on
August 30th, 2009. The DPJ, then the opposition party, won a landslide victory andbecame the new government. This survey reveals that the happiness of cabinet
supporters and non-supporters does not differ significantly. In addition, if we focus on
the two or three day after the election, the happiness of DPJ supporters and LDP
supporters is not different significantly. These results support the hypothesis that cabinet
supporters become happier.
A problem of this study is that we did not conduct a survey during the period when
the DPJ was the ruling party. If we did this and found that DPJ supporters were happier,the second hypothesis would have been more clearly supported. It is pity that we missed
this chance.

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Clark, A., 2007. Born To Be Mild? Cohort Effects Don’t (Fully) Explain Why
Well-Being is U-Shaped in Age. IZA DP No. 3170.
Cotton, J. 1988. On the Decomposition of Wage Differentials. Review of Economics andStatistics, 70, 236-243.
Easterlin, R., 2001. Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory. Economic
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Frey, B. S., 2008. Happiness: A Revolution in Economics. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
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Frey, B. S., Stutzer, A., 2002b. What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?
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Daily Panel Data. Paper presented at MESS Workshop, Netherlands.
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16

Table 1.

Mean of happiness of cabinet supporters and non-supporters (total sample)
n=42870

Cabinet Supporters
Non-cabinet Supporters
Don’t Know
Exclude Cabinet Supporters(Non-supporters＋undecided)

No. ofSamples
17040
15428
10402

Happiness
Mean
6.55
6.14
6.21

1.92
1.94
1.96

25830

6.17

1.95

17

SD

Table 2.

Mean happiness of supporters for various parties (total sample)
standard

No. ofSamples

Mean
Happinessdeviation

LDP

10274

6.55

1.93

DPJ

4571

6.325

1.91

New Komeito

1616

6.48

1.98

Japanese Communist Party

757

6.12

1.98

Social Democratic Party

452

6.26

1.83

People’s New Party

38

6.59

1.76

New Party Nippon

17

7.88

1.64

Other Parties

17

7.12

1.49

Non-Affiliated

24146

6.22

1.95

Don’t Know

982

6.26

2.12

n=42870

18

Table 3.

Results of Oaxaca decomposition

happiness

CoefficientStandard error

Happiness of non-supporters

6.188

0.052**

Happiness of supporters

6.445

0.060**

difference-0.2570.080**

explained-0.056

0.026*

unexplained-0.2010.078**

Total Observations

2363

Number of observations (Non supporters)

1437

Number of observations (Supporters)

926

Note: ** 1%, * 5% significance.

19

Table 4. Results of Oaxaca decomposition when income is included in the regression)
happiness

CoefficientStandard Error

Happiness of non-supporters

5.942

0.104**

Happiness of supporters

6.303

0.098**

difference-0.3610.143*

explained-0.0440.052

unexplained-0.3160.137*

Total Observations

724

Number of observations (Non supporters)

397

Number of observations (Supporters)

327

Note: ** 1%, * 5% significance.

20

Figure 1.

Monthly means of happiness of cabinet supporters and non-supporters

21

Figure 2.

Personalities of cabinet supporters and non-supporters

22