organisations have recently begun to measure progress at least partly in terms of the population’s SWB or “happiness”. This paper …

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality … share of both the “very unhappy” and the “perfectly happy”. Lower happiness inequality is found both between and within … goods helps to explain this greater happiness homogeneity. This new stylised fact arguably comes as a bonus to the Easterlin …

inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large cross-sectional surveys of subjective happiness and two panel surveys … (which are based directly on the scale of reported happiness) could be biased upwards if true utility is convex with respect … to reported happiness. We find some evidence of such bias, but it is small—yielding a new estimated elasticity of 1 …

Do other peoples’ incomes reduce the happiness which people in advanced countries experience from any given income? And … does this help to explain why in the U.S., Germany and some other advanced countries, happiness has been constant for many … samples since 1972) comparator income has a negative effect on happiness equal in magnitude to the positive effect of own …