What is it about?
Among 10 European countries with the requisite data, happiness since the 1980s has risen most in Spain, Italy, France and Germany and declined in Sweden and Denmark. These differences in the change in happiness are associated with differences in the generosity of welfare programs--increasing happiness going with greater generosity and decreasing happiness with declining generosity. The historical evidence indicates also that more rapid economic growth is not related to greater happiness, nor are improvements in the quality of the environment.
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Why is it important?
Happiness is starting to replace economic growth as a principal goal of public policy. Hence we need to know what is the best way to increase people's happiness. This analysis suggests that the answer is a focus on welfare state programs.
Perspectives
This is a rare study that looks at what actually happens in countries over time. Most empirical studies are based on data that look at country differences at a single point of time. Point-of-time studies tend to give misleading results, as evidenced here by the findings on both economic growth and quality of the environment.
Richard Easterlin
University of Southern California
Changes in welfare state programs better explained changes in happiness over the past several decades than economic growth, social capital, and air pollution (in the study sample). This result is surprising to many and deserves further attention, among scholars, policy makers, and the general public.
Kelsey O'Connor
STATEC Research
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Explaining happiness trends in Europe, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2210639119.
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