The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

We apply several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to international and intertemporal comparisons of well-being in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being compared to a...

Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Reasonable estimates of the size of the inflationary bias in the Czech Republic suggest that conventionally reported declines in real output and living standards during the...

This article tests for convergence over the period 1960 to 1999 in a wide range of fundamental aspects of living standards, namely life expectancy, infant survival, educational enrolment, literacy as well as telephone and television availability. I argue that one should look at convergence in...

Nations generally measure their economic performance using the yardstick of national output and income. It is not widely recognized, however, that conventional measures of national income and output exclude the value of improvements in the health status of the population. The present study...

This paper uses cross-national data from happiness surveys, jointly with data on per capita income and pollution, to examine how self-reported well-being varies with prosperity and environmental conditions. This approach allows us to show that citizens care about prosperity and the environment,...

This paper tests the empirical validity of Easterlin’s paradox, the absolute and relative income theorems which underpin it, and investigates associations between subjective well-being (SWB), economic growth and the factors which shape economic development via a series of multilevel...