The so-called "Easterlin paradox" (or "happiness paradox") is considered, to a great extent, to have triggered a whole line of research into the relationship between happiness and the economy. The empirical work published in 1974 by the American economist Richard Easterlin stated, briefly, that: 1) within every country and at a specific moment in time, wealthier people reported that on average they were the happiest; nevertheless, 2) if the countries were compared with each other, the wealthiest did not necessarily turn out to be the happiest, and 3) the study of time-series data corresponding to the USA did not allow the increases in income at the time to be associated with increases in the happiness of American citizens.

However, in Maite Ansa's view, "the Easterlin paradox has probably never taken place. If the research is carried out correctly, the conclusion is that in general terms happiness has been increasing with economic growth. Research done in 2008 and other later pieces have studied the same data as Easterlin, and after applying more suitable methodologies to them, the paradox becomes fuzzier: when a community enjoys significant economic development, the happiness of the citizens also increases," although there are exceptions.

As far as the historical evolution of the degree of happiness is concerned, "the studies carried out in Japan and the United States show that it is practically ‘flat', in other words, it has hardly undergone any variations over the last 40 years," maintained the researcher. As regards the reliability of the research conducted, "I do not believe it is very high, not to say pretty poor. It is a very subjective matter. For example, it has been shown that the surveyee reports enjoying a higher degree of happiness when the interview is conducted face to face instead of over the phone. The type of questions, their order, etc. also exert an influence", and so do many other aspects, as the author of the thesis pointed out.

"Subjective wellbeing" better than "happiness"

According to Ansa, "this line of research is empirical and subjective, in other words, one is working with data in which each person speaks about him- or herself from his/her own point of view. People are asked about their degree of satisfaction with their own lives (on a scale from 0 to 10). There are those who give a rating of ‘seven', for example, but there could be the case of someone who lives much better from an objective point of view and who gives a rating of ‘three'. So the responses are always subjective.

The author also added that the concept of happiness can be too inexact and it would need to be discarded and replaced by "subjective wellbeing".

Forty years after Easterlin formulated his paradox, "specialists in this field have reached the following conclusion: there is a positive correlation between income and happiness if one compares individuals of the same country at a specific historical moment (microeconomic level), and also when one compares countries at a specific moment (macroeconomic level). However, controversy still exists as to whether (or not) a relationship exists between a country's economic growth and the increase in the average subjective wellbeing of its inhabitants. Neither is it clear whether there exists a saturation point for income after which it stops having a positive influence on subjective wellbeing, nor whether the magnitude of the subjective wellbeing-income relationship is approximately equal for the rich as well as for the poor on a micro- and macroeconomic level," said Ansa.

Additional information

PhD thesis (La felicidad como asunto de interés para la ciencia económica-Happiness as a subject of interest in economics) written up in 2014 and supervised by Dr Vicente Camino-Beldarrain and Dr Mikel Zurbano-Irizar.

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