United States
The most widely used dataset for analyzing happiness in the United States is the General Social Survey,
conducted on a nationally representative sample of about 1,500 respondents each year from 1972 through 1993 (except
1992), rising to around 3,000 respondents every second year from 1994 through 2004, and 4,500 respondents in 2006.
These repeated cross-sectional surveys ask, “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say
that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Many researchers have examined the trend in US happiness
over this period and all have come to the same conclusion: the US has not gotten any happier over this time period and has
even experienced a mild decline in happiness (Easterlin, 1995).35 Our analysis turns up similar findings. The top panel of
Figure 20 plots the coefficients from an ordered probit regression of happiness on year fixed effects.36 These data suggest
a very mildly declining happiness trend through this period (slope = -0.0010, with a standard error of 0.0008), which
suggests that our happiness index declined by about 0.035 points between 1972 and 2006 (with a 95 percent confidence
interval around this decline ranging from -0.09 to +0.02 ).
The middle panel of Figure 20 shows that log real GDP per capita rose by 0.66, (or 66 log points) over the same
period, and the juxtaposition of this income growth with a roughly flat happiness trend appears to provide useful support
for the Easterlin paradox. Indeed, a happiness-income gradient of 0.4 would have led one to expect the happiness index to
have risen by 0.26 points. Translating this to the individual happiness categories, U.S. GDP growth from 1972 to 2006
was enough to suggest that by the end of the sample, another 10 percent of the population should have been “very happy,”
and the proportions “not too happy” and “fairly happy” should have been about 4 and 6 percentage points lower than
actually observed, respectively. Moreover, there is clear evidence of the absence of a time series happiness-income
relationship here—the data clearly reject the view that happiness grew as predicted by the happiness-income gradient
estimated within the United States or across countries. Although the U.S. time series is thus a data point supporting the
Easterlin paradox, it should be regarded as an interesting exception warranting further scrutiny.
To better understand trends in happiness within the United States and its relationship to recent income growth, we
look more closely at the patterns of income growth. In particular, the fruits of economic growth through this period were
quite unequally distributed (Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008).37 From 1972 through 2005, data from the Current Population
Survey (CPS) suggest that average real household income grew by only 15 to 20 percent in each of the three bottom
quintiles; the fourth quintile experienced growth of 30 percent, and only the top quintile realized income growth of 59
35 He shows a slight decline in happiness between 1972 and 1991 in the United States and in Easterlin (2005c) finds no trend in
happiness between 1972 and 2002. Blanchflower and Oswald (2004) report that well-being declined between 1972 and 1998.
Stevenson and Wolfers (2007) find that well-being has been flat for men between 1972 and 2006 and has declined among women over
this period.
36 We have corrected these data for the biases due to changes in question ordering noted by Smith (1979, 1990). Stevenson and
Wolfers (2008) provide a detailed explanation of how these corrections are made and show their impact on individual years.
37 They examine how happiness has changed across demographic and socioeconomic groups in the US. They find that some groups—
non-whites—have gotten happier, while others—those with less than a college degree—have gotten less happy. Overall, however the
variance of happiness has declined both within and between groups.
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