Diener, E., &Biswas-Diener, R. (2002). Will money increase subjective well-being?. Social indicators research, 57(2), 119-169.

Four replicable findings have emerged regarding the relation between income and subjective well-being (SWB): 1. There are large correlations between the wealth of nations and the mean reports of SWB in them, 2. There are mostly small correlations between income and SWB within nations, although these correlations appear to be larger in poor nations, and …

Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., &Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological bulletin, 125(2), 276.

W. Wilson’s (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of “happiness.” A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener’s (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. …

Frey, B. S., &Stutzer, A. (2002). What can economists learn from happiness research?. Journal of Economic literature, 40(2), 402-435.

Abstract In recent years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important insights for economics. We report how the economic variables income, unemployment and inflation …

Frey, B. S., &Stutzer, A. (2005). Happiness research: State and prospects. Review of social economy, 63(2), 207-228.

This paper intends to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and in which interesting directions it might develop. First, the current state of the research on happiness in economics is briefly discussed. We emphasize the potential of happiness research in testing competing theories of individual behavior. Second, the crucial issue …

Blanchflower, D. G., &Oswald, A. J. (2004). Money, sex and happiness: An empirical study. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 106(3), 393-415.

The links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness are studied using recent data on a sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Higher income does not buy more sex or more sexual partners. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, …

Helliwell, J. F. (2003). How& #39;s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being. Economic modelling, 20(2), 331-360.

This paper attempts to explain international trends and differences in subjective well-being over the final fifth of the twentieth century. This is done in several stages. First there is a brief review of some reasons for giving a central role to subjective measures of well-being. This is followed by sections containing a survey of earlier …

Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological bulletin, 95(3), 542.

Reviews the literature since 1967 on subjective well-being (SWB [including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect]) in 3 areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Most measures of SWB correlate moderately with each other and have adequate temporal reliability and internal consistency; the global concept of happiness is being replaced with more specific and well-defined concepts, …