The effects of wealth and income on subjective well-being and ill-being*.

I Introduction

The accepted view among psychologists is that objective economic circumstances have single a slight though statistically significant issue on happiness and other measures of well-being (Andrews & Withey 1976; Campbell et al. 1976; Argyle 1987; Headey et al. 1993; Diener et al. 1999; Kahnemann et al. 1999; Diener & Biswas-Diener 2002) This view has sometimes been repeated through economists, usually with reference to Easterlin's seminal 1974 paper, 'Does economic growing improve the human lot?' However, the claim that coin has little effect on happiness is almost entirely based upon weak relationships between survey measures of happiness and measures