Income and Output: Their Relation to Happiness

Introduction

All people have experienced various emotions such as anger, saddness, and happiness. In general it is the consenus that the majority of people would like to exprience greater happiness throughout their lives. This raises the question of how can this be done. Recently, Economists have been researching links of GNP (wealth of certain nations) and income to how it effects a citizens happiness. The main questions we will be trying to answer today are: Does greater wealth mean greater happiness? & Why at any point in time people with higher incomes are happier than low income citizens, but over a life cycle as income rises happiness stays relatively constant? These questions will be answered following the work of various economists whose ideas lie on both sides of the argument.