Wellbeing–Consumption Paradox

Description

"In 1974, Richard Easterlin made the paradoxical observation that income and happiness are correlated at a given point in time, but happiness does not rise as income increases over time. In our latest research, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, we reconsider the “Easterlin Paradox” using new data and methods. We analyse two wellbeing indicators (life satisfaction and life expectancy) and two consumption indicators (income and carbon footprint) for close to 120 countries over the 2005–2015 period.

We find that people in countries with high levels of consumption tend to be happier and healthier than people in countries with low levels of consumption in a given year, but there is no evidence that growing incomes or carbon footprint improve either wellbeing indicator over time. However, life satisfaction tends to decline in countries with non-growing incomes or carbon footprint, which is bad news for ambitious climate change mitigation. The good news is that life expectancy increases steadily in all countries regardless of whether incomes or carbon footprint are growing or not." (https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/paradox/)