Objective Confirmation of Subjective Measures of Human Well-Being: Evidence from the U.S.A.

Abstract

The Best Things in Life Are Free? Does money buy happiness? Answers to this question differ, depending, in part, on whether one asks an economist or a psychologist. The former would point to correlations between higher incomes and greater self-reported well-being, whereas the latter would argue that happiness shows little correlation with absolute material goods and is instead dictated largely by an individual's so-called set-point. Another strand of research invokes a hedonic treadmill, whereby income matters until subsistence requirements are met, at which point comparisons with one's neighbors are what influence one's sense of life satisfaction. Oswald and Wu (p. 576 , published online 17 December; see the Perspective by Layard ) establish that the subjective responses from 1 million adults, collected within health surveys conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do indeed correlate with objective measures of quality of life.