The New Stylized Facts About Income and Subjective Well-Being

Justin Wolfers, Betsey Stevenson and Daniel Sacks

No 9280, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related.

Keywords: Adaptation; Easterlin paradox; Economic growth; Life satisfaction; Quality of life; Subjective well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 I3 J1 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-hap and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9280 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: The New Stylized Facts about Income and Subjective Well-Being (2013)
Working Paper: The New Stylized Facts About Income and Subjective Well-Being (2013)
Working Paper: The New Stylized Facts about Income and Subjective Well-Being (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9280

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9280

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().