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Countries with higher rates of taxation tend to have happier citizens

Binder, D., (2013), “Countries with higher rates of taxation tend to have happier citizens”, European Politics and Policy Blog, 10 September.

What impact does a country’s level of taxation have on the happiness of its citizens? Using OECD data, David Binder assesses the relationship between high taxation levels and measures of citizen wellbeing/happiness. He finds that there is a correlation between high taxation and increased happiness, but that there are some important outliers such as Switzerland, which have very high levels of citizen wellbeing, but low rates of taxation.