In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has fallen in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the “very unhappy” and the...

We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on potential adaptation to poverty. We use panel data on almost 54,000 individuals living in Germany from 1985 to 2012 to show first that life satisfaction falls with both the incidence and intensity of...

This paper explores a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries. We distinguish four groups of aggregate variables as potential determinants of satisfaction: political, economic, institutional, and human development...

As shown empirically for many transition economies, even small changes in assumptions on economies of size and adult equivalence scales are likely to produce significant changes in the analysis of poverty and its distribution across households and individuals. Since such exercises are then used...

Despite falling per capita incomes in these countries, globalization has probably not led to a deterioration of food security in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Measures of food inadequacy in these countries are significantly lower than in developing countries. The majority of the most severe...