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Journal of Happiness Studies

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01.06.2008 | Research Paper

What wealth-happiness paradox? A short note on the American case

verfasst von: Claude S. Fischer

Erschienen in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Ausgabe 2/2008

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Abstract

Happiness scholars have tried to resolve the seeming paradox that as Americans’ wealth increased substantially over the last few decades, their happiness did not. This article questions whether the paradox is real. Demonstrations of the paradox almost always rely on GDP per capita as the measure of wealth, but that is a poor measure of a people’s well-being. It is heavily and increasingly skewed; it does not account for effort. Using instead measures of household income, male income, and average wages eliminates the paradox; these indicators of affluence have grown only slowly or declined in the same period, paralleling the changes in happiness scores. Moreover, using these indicators reveals a modest but real correlation between material well-being and national happiness.

Vorheriger Artikel Happiness in shrinking cities in Germany

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See also Easterlin (2001), Lane (2000), Layard (2005), Frey and Stutzer (2002), DiTella, MacCulloch, and Oswald (2003), Binswager (2006), Hagerty (2000), Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003), Veenhoven (2000, 2005), Schwartz (2004); Ott (2001); Alesina, Di Tella, and MacCulloch (2001), Oswald (1997), etc.

I refer to issues such as measurement anomalies in the GSS happiness index (Smith, 1979), preserving the categorical quality of the measure and, applying time-series appropriate models.

Happiness, GSS: The mean score for the national sample of the General Social Survey’s HAPPY question, 1972–2004. Happiness, 1946–2005 (for Figure 5): Means for non-GSS surveys from the World Database of Happiness (Veenhoven, 2006). GDP per capita: Gross Domestic Product in chained 2000 dollars, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/home/gdp.htm), divided by annual population. Median household income: DeNavas, Proctor, and Lee (2006), table A1. Median male income: Census historical tables, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p02.html, table P2. Mean hourly wages, 1947–99: Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, Online (http://www.hsus.cambridge.org/HSUSWeb/toc/hsusHome.do), table C Ba4440-4483—Hourly and weekly earnings of production workers in manufacturing, by industry: 1947B1999. Mean hourly wages, 2000–05: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, hours, and earnings from the current employment statistics (http://www.data.bls.gov/PDQ). I calculated inflation adjustments, where needed, using the CPI-U series.

There are other reasons to reject GDP per capita for such analyses: The happiness surveys are of adults, but GDP per capita includes children in the denominator. Relatedly, the GDP per capita figure rises just because the birth rate drops. Also, an increasing proportion of GDP was held by corporations in a form not easily accessible even to shareholders.

The R-squared for mean happiness score X year is .03 for a linear regression, .05 for a quadratic one, and .16 for a cubic one (.20 if the November, 2001, poll is dropped).

The “hourly wages” series here is for manufacturing only, because of data limitations.

Alesina, A., Di Tella, R., & MacCulloch, R. (2001). Inequality and happiness: Are Europeans and Americans different? National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8198

Binswanger, M. (2006). Why does income growth fail to make us happier? Searching for the treadmills behind the paradox of happiness. Journal of Socio-Economics, 35, 366–381CrossRef

DeNavas-Walt, C., Proctor, B. D., & Lee, C. H. (2006). Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2005. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-231, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Di Tella, R., MacCulloch, R. J., & Oswald, A. J. (2003). The macroeconomics of happiness. Review of Economics and Statistics, 85, 809–827CrossRef

Easterlin, R. A. (1973). Does money buy happiness? The Public Interest, 30, 3–10

Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: toward a unified theory. The Economic Journal, 111, 465–484CrossRef

Fischer, C. S., & Hout, M. (2006). Century of difference: How America changed in the last hundred years. New York: Russell Sage Foundation

Frey, B. S., & Stutzer, A. (2002). Happiness and economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Hagerty, M. (2000). Social comparisons of income in one’s community: Evidence from national surveys of income and happiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 764–771CrossRef

Hagerty, M., & Veenhoven, R. (2003). Wealth and happiness revisited—growing national income does go with greater happiness. Social Indicators Research, 64, 1–27CrossRef

Hout, M. (2006). Money and morale. Working Paper, Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley

Jacobs, J. A., & Gerson, K. (2001). Overworked individuals or overworked families? Explaining trends in work, leisure, and family time. Work and Occupations, 28, 40–63CrossRef

Lane, R. E. (2000). The loss of happiness in market democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press

Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. New York: PenguinCrossRef

Oswald, A. J. (1997). Happiness and economic performance. Economic Journal, 107, 1815–1831CrossRef

Ott, J. (2001). Did the market depress happiness in the US? Journal of Happiness Studies, 2, 433–443CrossRef

Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Ecco

Smith, T. W. (1979). Happiness: Time trends, seasonal variations, intersurvey differences, and other mysteries. Social Psychology Quarterly, 42, 18–30CrossRef

Veenhoven, R. (2000). Freedom and happiness: A comparative study in 46 nations in the early 1990’s. In E. Diener & E. M. Suh (Eds.), Culture and subjective well-being (pp. 257–288). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Veenhoven, R. (2005). Is life getting better?: How long and happily do people live in modern society? European Psychologist, 10, 330–343CrossRef

Veenhoven, R. (2006). World database of happiness. Erasmus University Rotterdam. Available at: http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl

Titel: What wealth-happiness paradox? A short note on the American case
verfasst von: Claude S. Fischer
Publikationsdatum: 01.06.2008
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Happiness Studies / Ausgabe 2/2008
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9047-4

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