The economics of happiness

Justin Wolfers has a series of posting on the Freakonoimcs blog on the economics of happiness.

Here he discusses his research with Betsey Stevenson showing that there is no Easterlin Paradox. The Easterlin Paradox is the juxtaposition of three observations:

1. Within a society, rich people tend to be much happier than poor people.
2. But, rich societies tend not to be happier than poor societies (or not by much).
3. As countries get richer, they do not get happier.

Here he discusses the new evidence that rich countries are happier than poor countries.

Here he discusses the historical evidence on the fact that rich countries are happier than poor ones and how this fact remained hidden in the data for several decades, and .....

there is more to come on how comparisons of rich and poor people also yield a very similar wellbeing-income gradient.