Economic Growth and Well-being in Singapore and Malaysia: A Comparative Case Study

Sammanfattning: Despite a common colonial past under the British empire, Singapore and Malaysia have experienced vastly different development paths since independence. While Singapore has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world today, Malaysia’s economy remains a mere third of that of Singapore’s. Despite the economic disparity between the two countries, the newly available data on well-being, as presented in the 2018 United Nations World Happiness Reports (WHRs), ranked the two countries consecutively 34th and 35th. Hence, it seems that Singapore’s economic prosperity has not yielded proportionally higher well-being levels. This paper attempts to find out whether there is an association between GDP per capita and well-being in the two countries. Moreover, the WHRs’ “six key explanatory factors”, UN’s estimations of what the happiness rank consists of, are analyzed in relation to economic growth and happiness. It is found out that GDP growth has not steadily increased well-being in the long term in Singapore and Malaysia. Moreover, Singapore’s economic success has yielded more well-being since independence than Malaysia, but the former’s much higher national income has not resulted into proportionally higher well-being compared to the latter.