Why Happiness Hasn't Increased

Despite vast increases in income per capita, longer holidays, better health care, and dramatic technological increases over the past fifty years, the overall happiness of people in many countries has not increased much, if at all. Table 1, below, shows that the percentages of people claiming to be very happy, pretty happy, and not too happy have barely changed at all from 1975 to 1996. Richard Layard points out several reasons as to why this is the case.