This paper shows that within-country happiness inequality has fallen in the majority of countries that have experienced … addition to the Easterlin paradox, which states that the time trend in average happiness is flat during episodes of long …-run income growth. This mean-preserving declining spread in happiness comes about via falls in both the share of individuals who …

This paper examines how the level and dispersion of self-reported happiness has evolved over the period 1972 …-2006. While there has been no increase in aggregate happiness, inequality in happiness has fallen substantially since the 1970s …. There have been large changes in the level of happiness across groups: Two-thirds of the black-white happiness gap has been …

that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men …-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded … a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men …

Cross-disciplinary ?happiness research? has made big progress in the measurement of individual welfare. This … development makes it tempting to pursue the old dream of maximizing aggregate happiness as a social welfare function. However, we … postulate that the appropriate approach is not to maximize aggregate happiness in seeking to improve outcomes by direct policy …

This article sheds light on the important differences in self-declared happiness across countries of similar affluence …. It hinges on the different happiness statements of natives and immigrants in a set of European countries to disentangle …-negligible importance in explaining international heterogeneity in happiness. In some countries, such as France, they are responsible for …