Explaining happiness trends in Europe.

ABSTRACT: In Europe, differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs-increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal conclusion from a time-series study of 10 Northern, Western, and Southern European countries with the requisite data. In the present study, cross-section analysis of recent data gives a misleading impression that economic growth, social capital, and/or quality of the environment are driving happiness trends, but in the long-term, time-series data, these variables have no relation to happiness.

SUBMITTER: Easterlin RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9477395 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature