Income growth and happiness: Reassessment of the Easterlin Paradox

Edsel Beja

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper presents evidence of a positive but very small long run relationship between income growth and happiness, evidence that can disprove the Easterlin Paradox. However, the paper argues that there is actually reason to sustain the paradox because it finds the magnitude of the estimated relationship too small to suggest that income growth has substantial consequence in improving happiness over the long-term. Certainly, the evidence suggests that happiness is more than about raising incomes. This paper argues that a rejection of the paradox is acceptable if and only if the empirical findings indicate economic significance.

Keywords: Easterlin Paradox; income growth; happiness; dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A20 C53 I30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-gro, nep-hap, nep-hpe and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53360/1/MPRA_paper_53360.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Income growth and happiness: reassessment of the Easterlin Paradox (2014)
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:pra:mprapa:53360

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().