What makes workers happy? Here we argue that pure 'rank' matters. It is currently believed that wellbeing is determined partly by an individual's absolute wage (say, 30,000 dollars a year) and partly by the individual's relative wage (say, 30,000 dollars compared to an average in the company or...

One of the famous questions in social science is whether money makes people happy. We offer new evidence by using longitudinal data on a random sample of Britons who receive medium-sized lottery wins of between Đ1000 and Đ120,000 (that is, up to approximately U.S. $200,000). When compared to...

Divorce is a leap in the dark. This paper investigates whether people who split up actually become happier. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we are able to observe an individual's level of psychological wellbeing in the years before and after divorce. Our results show that divorcing...

What makes workers happy? Here we argue that pure ‘rank’ matters. It is currently believed that wellbeing is determined partly by an individual’s absolute wage (say, 30,000 dollars a year) and partly by the individual’s relative wage (say, 30,000 dollars compared to an average in the...

It is believed that the length of a person's life depends on a mixture of economic and social factors. Yet the relative importance of these is still debated. We provide evidence in this paper that marriage has a much more important (positive) effect on longevity than high income does. For men,...