Briefly AFAIK
Approval= empire wide
Moral= planet wide
Popularity= what other people think of you
No idea if these are right, but they seem to work. Don't know why when you buy or complete zero-g it doesnt change moral though.

Does a Morale Resource have to be near a planet to affect it or are all resources empire wide?

All bonus resources are empire-wide... Starbases just affect their radius.

Now you just contradicted yourself. How can something be empire wide yet have a radius determined by a starbase. It can't be both. It either impact the entire empire or just the planets within it's radius, can't be both.

Let's clear this up really quick...

Morale = what the people on a planet feels. Each planet has a base morale, that is dependant upon it's population. At 1 million, you have a base morale of 99. This curves downwards, so that at 25 billion, you have a base morale of 20. Morale is only on a planet. Morale building effects this base value. That's why it constantly takes more and more morale building to make people happy as you add more and more farms. Don't believe any of those 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 ratios... that's just them guessing. The correct value would be something like, 1 farm, 1 morale, 2 farm, 3 morale, 3 farm, 6 morale, etc... without the exact building, I can't give you the exact value.

Approval = approval is a modifier to morale. It is a number that is the result of your morale being lowered by your tax rate. If you set your tax too high, your approval drops. You get more money, but people will be unhappy, very simple. The percentage value on the bottom is an averaged value. The only tip I can give you here is, if your people is happy, tax them more, if they are unhappy, go easier on them. As long as you don't tax more than 69%, you will be fine. Once you go to 70%, the negative impact of tax goes insane and no amount of morale bonuses can help you.

Popularity... this is probably a reference to your culture, or influence, which affects your border, tourism, culture conquests, etc... Higher population is the easiest way to get lots of culture. Build an embasy on your econ world and you're on your way to culture conquest in no time.


Now, starbases:

All the bonus that any MINING starbase gives (IE: +20 to economy) is added to your racial attribute, and works exactly like your race picks, federalist party, etc... so yes, it is empire wide. The area of effect for a MINING starbase, has no meaning what so ever, except that it generates a base influence in that zone just like any other starbase.

For Military and Economic Starbases, the extra effects (+1 to ship defense, +10% trade) only works in the zone that appears. Any 'partial' parsecs also counts as being in the zone.


Hope that helps,

So just to be extra clear regarding Mining starbases....

The area of effect for mining starbases only relates to any specific defenses that have been placed on the starbase, not to the resource that is being mined (which always has an empire-wide effect).

I'm still confused about approval. I can have two planets, both the same class, projects, population etc with vastly different approvals i.e. 100% on one and 44% on the other. I notice with every game, that my approval rating steadily declines throughout the game no matter what I do...with one exception...taxes.

Here's a trick for you if you want your empire-wide AR to sky-rocket!

Step 1. Quicksave (in case it backfires) 
Step 2. raise taxes to 100% and lower spending to 0.
Step 3. spend two turns (cross your fingers)
Step 4. drop your taxes back to ~25-30% and increase spending.

You'll have (if it worked) and imediate boost of AR to nearly 100% and your economy with go through the roof!  

Be sure and do Step 1 though, sometimes your empire will suscede from you!   If that happens, reload and try again. The empire's response is different after reload.