news flash: happiness inequality down

from the TIMES:

Despite the fact that income inequality — the chasm between rich and poor — has grown to levels rarely seen outside the third world, happiness inequality in the United States seems to have declined sharply over the past 35 years. And that is not because everyone is just that much more cheerful.

According to new research by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the happiness gap between blacks and whites has fallen by two-thirds since the early 1970s. The gender gap (women used to be happier than men) has disappeared. Most significant, the disparity in happiness within demographic groups has also shrunk: the unhappiest 25 percent of the population has gotten a lot happier. The happiest quarter is less cheerful.

It seems odd that happiness would become more egalitarian over a period in which the share of the nation’s income sucked in by the richest 1 percent of Americans rose from 7 percent to 17 percent. In fact, the report does find a growing happiness gap between Americans with higher levels of education and those with less, which is roughly in line with the widening pay gap between the skilled and unskilled.

from the author of the paper:

Two trends are pretty clear. First, average happiness is roughly unchanged since the 1970’s. And second, happiness inequality — measured here as the variance of happiness — fell pretty dramatically from 1972 until the late 1980’s; this compression has since stalled, and about one third of the total decline has subsequently been reversed.

[snip]

The good news is that the unhappy end of the distribution has become somewhat happier; the bad news is that the happy end has become less happy.

Apparently women either are or are not getting less happy as a group. Who can say?

Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess that it was more fun being rich when you could live off your interest as opposed to the 100 hours of billable time the working rich have to put in these days. When I say "have to," I mean have to, at least in the case of rich attorneys; apparently judges don't give a lot of incompletes.

NBER digest of the shorter hours paper available here.

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