The economic and psychological literature on the determinants of happiness is notable for its inability to confirm a strong relation between material prosperity and happiness. In addition, the empirical work relies primarily on analysis of surveys. Another way to test the determinants of happiness is to investigate migration patterns between jurisdictions where conditions differ. This paper ana...

In his book ‘‘The Politics of Happiness’’ Derek Bok argues that happiness should be a goal in public policy. He presents an inventory of social problems in the US with negative effects on happiness, like inadequate education, chronic pain, sleep disorders, depressions, divorce, single-parent families, and financial hardship. He presents interesting options to deal with these problems. He also p...

The striking thing about the happiness-income paradox is that over the long-term--usually a period of 10 y or more--happiness does not increase as a country's income rises. Heretofore the evidence for this was limited to developed countries. This article presents evidence that the long term nil relationship between happiness and income holds also for a number of developing countries, the easter...

happiness is among the concepts which were subject of empirical studies in 1960s. this concept has been used interchangeably with such concepts as joy, satisfaction with life and the like. while meaningfully correlating with the feeling of joy and satisfaction with life, as indicated by numerous researches, the feeling of happiness is affected by different factors and situations. the present re...

The two quotes above suggest alternate ideas about the sources of happiness. The first (written around AD 180) is nn Aristotelian notion. Happiness is a way of living, not a state. The second quote (written some 1500 years later) suggests ideas about the sources of happiness perhaps more akin to the way that we tend to view [hem today. Happiness is about conviviality, warmth. food (and perhaps ...

While Malaysia is one of the few economies which has successfully enjoyed economic growth with equity from 1970 to 1990, recent studies suggest that income inequality rose in the 1990s. This paper re-examines these arguments in the light of Malaysia’s economic development and the policies undertaken for the 1990s and beyond. In relation to Malaysia’s progress to a second-tier newly industrializ...

True. In low-income countries, openness to international trade is indispensable for rapid economic growth. Indeed, few developing nations have grown rapidly over time without simultaneous increases in both exports and imports, and virtually all developing countries that have grown rapidly have done so under open trade policies or declining trade protection. India and China are the best recent e...

This paper presents a review of literature, validation, methods, and applications of subjective well-being data in economic analysis. The idea is to provide researchers and policy makers a comprehensive guideline to what need to be considered before embarking on a research in the economics of happiness such as data collection and the validation of happiness scales.

I n 1974, Richard A. Easterlin, a coauthor of the work by Easterlin et al. (1) in PNAS, published a seminal article (2) that has generated a huge literature. It sought to explain why the happiness score in the United States (and elsewhere) had stayed roughly constant, whereas income per capita had trended up. This evidence has come to be known as the Easterlin Paradox. His explanation was that ...