Liberal vs Conservatives, this is one debate that will probably find no winner until the end of time. Even if you scour the earth for evidences supporting your claim that one is better than the other, there's no way you can put an end to this argument. However, when it comes to life satisfaction, the countries living in one particular philosophy are living a much better life.
In a study conducted by the State University of New Jersey, it is found out that liberal nations find more satisfaction as compared to those who are in conservative countries.
"Liberal governments tend to do more to shield citizens against certain hardships, such as unemployment and poverty, which can make people feel happier overall," said the study's lead author, Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, PhD, of Rutgers.
"On the other hand, conservatives rate their well-being higher than liberals because conservatives more readily support and rationalize the status quo, thus, believing that socioeconomic hardships are a result of individual shortcomings."
Individually, however, conservatives tend to be happier with their life compared to liberal. The more conservative citizens reported higher life satisfaction than their liberal counterparts, regardless of their government's political leanings.
"These findings lead us to believe that conservatives living in liberal countries are most likely to report the highest well-being," said Okulicz-Kozaryn.
The Liberal vs Conservative study, which was started in 1970, was conducted through the help of more than one million public opinion surveys from 16 Western European countries. These are France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Norway. To know if the nation is a liberal or conservative, researchers determined the ease of access on pensions, unemployment compensation, and sickness benefits. From the nations mentioned above, Sweden is the most liberal and Scandinavian are generally the most liberal region. Denmark is consistently the happiest country among all those that participated.
"Our findings are important to governments and organizations because they underscore the impact that these two entities have on one another," said Okulicz-Kozaryn.
"Politics is everywhere, and our findings suggest that citizens are best served when governments and organizations work together by instituting policies that have been shown to increase citizens' well-being. For example, if governments do not enact sufficient policies that protect citizens from underemployment, the expected decreases in well-being can have an effect on employees' productivity within organizations."
So, Liberal vs Conservative, which do you think is better?
