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.