Afghanistan is a context where individuals have to cope with the most adverse of circumstances. Our study of happiness finds that Afghans conform to a remarkably consistent worldwide pattern in the determinants of happiness across individuals within countries of all different development levels....

The economics of happiness is an approach to assessing welfare that combines economists’ techniques with those of psychologists, and relies on more expansive notions of utility than does conventional economics. Research based on this approach highlights the factors—in addition to...

This paper focuses on an age-old puzzle: why some societies peacefully tolerate high levels of inequality and others do not. The authors posit that opportunity and mobility over time are as important as current distributions are to the explanation. Assessments of past mobility and future...