Andrew Eric Clark, “Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?” Review of Income and Wealth 64(2): 245-269, June 2018.

• Happiness data allow answers to the questions: (1) what promotes happiness; (2) what activities do happy people undertake?; and, (3) how can we value a public project?

• One common measure of subjective well-being is the Cantril ladder, where respondents are asked to imagine a ladder with eleven numbered levels, from zero on the bottom (worst possible life for the respondent) to ten on the top (best possible life for the respondent).

• Studies of the effect of income on happiness generally indicate diminishing marginal happiness from income, so that the happiness boost from an additional $1000, say, is greater for lower income people than for higher income folks.

• Another nearly universal finding is that unemployment is negatively correlated with happiness. 

• A graph of happiness as a function of age tends to be u-shaped, though the reasons for this relationship are not well understood. 

• The black/white happiness gap in the US – whites tend to have higher subjective wellbeing (SWB) – is shrinking.

• Marriage seems good for happiness (or at least positively correlated with it), and single people who are happy are more likely to get married.

• Children are not a sure-fire happiness booster, though people who are happier are more likely to have kids down the road.

• Aggregate unemployment is worse for national SWB than is inflation, basically (in that a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment lowers SWB by more than does a 1 percentage point increase in the inflation rate) but an individual suffers less from unemployment when the aggregate unemployment rate is high

• Something (like a bigger house) that raises your happiness might undermine someone else’s

• Adaptation (the hedonic treadmill) is limited with respect to unemployment, poverty, disability, lack of job security, and (for something that raises SWB) cosmetic surgery!

• Do happy teachers lead to better student performance? (Some evidence (p. 258) says yes.)

• Happiness promotes health – and voting for incumbents.

• Affective happiness versus life satisfaction: “Would you prefer to live a good life, or to remember having lived a good life? [p. 264].”