Is affluence a good thing? The book "The Challenge of Affluence" by Avner Offer (2006) argues that economic prosperity weakens self-control and undermines human well-being. Consistent with a pessimistic view, we show that psychological distress has been rising through time in modern Great...

Using a longitudinal household panel dataset in the UK, where a significant proportion of the interviews are conducted in September each year, we are able to show that the attacks of September 11 resulted in lower levels of subjective well-being for those interviewed after that date in 2001...