Paradox Lost?

Richard Easterlin

Review of Behavioral Economics, 2017, vol. 4, issue 4, 311-339

Abstract: Or Paradox Regained? Critics from three different disciplines have recently claimed that the Easterlin Paradox is not supported by time-series analysis. New data for both the United States and countries worldwide, however, confirm that long-term trends in growth rates of happiness and real GDP per capita are not significantly positively related. The evidence indicates that it is Paradox Regained. The principal reasons that the critics reach a different conclusion is that they misinterpret the Paradox, omit available data, overlook problems of data comparability, err in the measurement of economic growth, or, most importantly, fail to focus on long-term rather than short-term growth rates.

Keywords: Easterlin Paradox; comparative political economy; economic growth; income; happiness; life satisfaction; subjective well-being; transition countries; less developed countries; developed countries; long-term; short-term; trends; fluctuations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 I31 O10 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/105.00000068 (application/xml)

Related works:
Working Paper: Paradox Lost? (2016)
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:now:jnlrbe:105.00000068

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Behavioral Economics from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman (lucy.wiseman@nowpublishers.com).