This paper attempts to explain why large cities tend to score low on indices of happiness/life satisfaction, while at the same time experiencing population growth. Using Norwegian survey and register data, we show that different population segments are behind these seemingly contradictory...

Societal progress is characterized primarily as an improvement in the distribution of wellbeing; however, a small set of additional variables are also necessary. Social indicators based on objective measures are inherently limited by the subjective assessments necessary of "experts" to select...

Answers to the Eurobarometer question on Life Satisfaction are used to explore the effects of macroeconomic performance and institutional quality on average levels of self‐assessed well-being in the countries of the enlarged European Union between 2004 and 2011. It is found that variations in...

Very little is understood about how immigrants affect the happiness, or subjective well-being of natives. We use the European Social Survey to analyze the effects of aggregate immigration flows on the subjective well-being of native-born populations in a panel of 26 countries between 2002 and...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...