The happiness–income paradox revisited

By Richard A. Easterlin, Laura McVey, M. Switek, Onnicha Sawangfa, Jacqueline Zweig. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010

1,095 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The striking thing about the happiness–income paradox is that over the long-term —usually a period of 10 y or more—happiness does not increase as a country's income rises. Heretofore the evidence for this was limited to developed countries. This article presents evidence that the long term nil relationship between happiness and income holds also for a number of developing countries, the eastern European countries transitioning from socialism to capitalism, and an even wider sample of developed countries than previously studied. It also finds that in the short-term in all three groups of countries, happiness and income go together, i.e., happiness tends to fall in economic contractions and rise in expansions. Recent critiques of the paradox, claiming the time series relationship between happiness and income is positive, are the result either of a statistical artifact or a confusion of the short-term relationship with the long-term one.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a530ef34f4ae019091772d1347982798f5a643a7

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Citations in the corpus

Inequality with Ordinal Data (2017, neutral): “17See Easterlin (1995), Easterlin et al. (2010).”
The economics of degrowth (2012, background): “Growth above a level that satisfies basic needs does not improve psychological wellbeing (Easterlin et al., 2010).”
A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being (2014, background): “However, happiness is a difficult concept to define (3 – 5) and the complexity of the relationship between happiness and wealth (6 – 8) suggests that there is no simple happiness – reward relationship.”
Local currencies for purposive degrowth? A quality check of some proposals for changing money-as-usual (2013, background): “desirability of further economic growth – especially in high- and middle-income countries – is questioned on the basis of evidence from happiness research that the long-term (>10 years) correlation between happiness and income (even in many poor countries) is nil (Easterlin et al., 2010).”
When Does Economic Growth Improve Life Satisfaction? Multilevel Analysis of the Roles of Social Trust and Income Inequality in 46 Countries, 1981–2012 (2017, background): “Others argue that time span is a crucial factor: economic growth and the trends of subjective well-being are associated in the short run, but this correlation vanishes in the long run (Easterlin et al., 2010; Clark et al., 2014; Bartolini and Sarracino, 2014).”
Income, health, and well-being around the world: evidence from the Gallup World Poll. (2008, background): “I have also experimented with a measure of the HIV prevalence (1) (2) (3) (5) (6) enoNenoNenoNffotucemocnI y 12,000 y 12,000 ln ( y 582.1057.0519.0378.0548.03002) (0.050) (0.052) (0.106) (0.161) (0.446) Growth rate 2000–2003 3.25 1.94 6.05 4.95 8.51 (1.46) (1.22) (1.72) (1.91) (6.04) Growth rate 199”
Global Patterns of Material Flows and their Socio-Economic and Environmental Implications: A MFA Study on All Countries World-Wide from 1980 to 2009 (2014, background): “[55] showed that over the long term, life satisfaction in a country does not increase with a rise in average income (and related material consumption) in that country.”
Does Religion Affect Economic Growth and Happiness? Evidence from Ramadan* (2015, neutral): “The very fact that the debate over the Easterlin paradox is far from over (Easterlin et al. 2010) is in itself an indication that the relationship is not quite straightforward.”
Happiness and Economic Growth: The Evidence (2013, positive): “…relationship between subjective well-being and economic growth, drawing on research carried on at the University of Southern California over the last decade (see Easterlin 2005a, Easterlin and Plagnol 2008, Easterlin 2009, Easterlin et al. 2010, Easterlin and Sawangfa 2010, Easterlin et al. 2012).”
Happiness in the Air: How Does a Dirty Sky Affect Mental Health and Subjective Well-being? (2017, background): “Drawing an updated database of 37 countries, Easterlin et al. (2010) reconfirm the paradox.”
Attitudes to Income Inequality: Experimental and Survey Evidence (2014, background): “Extensive surveys of work in this area can be found in Fehr and Schmidt (2003), Sobel (2005) and Camerer and Fehr (2006).”
Assessing the Relationship Between Human Well-being and Ecosystem Services: A Review of Frameworks (2014, background): “One potential explanation for the Paradox is that beyond a basic consumption threshold, further gains in well-being may be associated with relative rather than absolute income gains (Easterlin 1974; Easterlin 1995; Layard 2005; Easterlin et al. 2010).”
Toward a theory of transformative entrepreneuring: Poverty reduction and conflict resolution in Rwanda's entrepreneurial coffee sector (2013, background): “This issue may become all the more important as a conflict zone moves out of extreme poverty, due to the diminishing correlation between economic wealth and quality of life as nations develop economically (Clark et al., 2008; Easterlin et al., 2010).”