This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e.,...

Satiation of need is generally ignored by growth theory. I study a model where consumers may be satiated in any given good but new goods may be introduced. A social planner will never elect a trajectory with long-run satiation. Instead, he will introduce enough new goods to avoid such a...

The links between economic prosperity and subjective well-being was one of the first ones to be investigated, ever since the latter has been measured. For convenience and availability matters, income (what people earn) was mostly used at the individual level. It is only since recently that data...

Wealth is far from being a homogeneous and monolithic concept. Wealth can be positive or negative (e.g. assets versus debts), more or less accessible (e.g. bank accounts versus housing wealth), and more or less time-constrained (e.g. cars versus bonds and mutual funds). These different forms of...

This chapter explores links between national wealth and subjective well-being (SWB) at the macro-level for a sample of 26 OECD countries in 2005. The national wealth data have been developed in the context of the debate on sustainability. They are from two alternative sources. After discussing...