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Claudia Senik

Is it Possible to Raise National Happiness?

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Journal Article

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Alberto Prati, Claudia Senik,
Is it possible to raise national happiness?,
Journal of Public Economics,
Volume 257,
2026,
105619,
ISSN 0047-2727,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2026.105619.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272726000551)

Topic:
Happiness Economics
Alberto Prati and Claudia
Journal of Public Economics
In press

We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective and current life evaluations, and apply it to unexploited archival data from the USA. When correcting for rescaling, we find that the well-being of Americans has substantially increased, on par with GDP, health, education, and liberal 30 democracy, from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Using several datasets, we shed light on other happiness puzzles, 31 including the apparent stability of life evaluations during COVID-19, why Ukrainians report similar levels of life 32 satisfaction today as before the war, and the absence of parental happiness.

Keywords: Happiness; Life satisfaction; Subjective well-being; Rescaling; Easterlin paradox; Cantril ladder; Gallup