Richer people are happier than poorer people, but when a country becomes richer over time, its people do not become happier. This seemingly contradictory pair of findings of Richard Easterlin has be-come famous as the Easterlin Paradox. However, it was met with counterevidence. To shed more...

Using Italian time series since 1861, we explore the evolution of living standards after political unification both at the national and at the territorial level. Firstly, we use univariate statistical analysis on homogeneous national time series. Secondly, we employ available homogeneous series...

In Europe differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs - increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal...