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The Atlantic:
Why don't boom-times make people happier?

9 October 2014

New research from Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Michael Norton, professors at the London School of Economics and Harvard respectively, looks at four decades of data (collected from more than 150 countries, including one dataset from the Centers for Disease Control and covers 2.5 million U.S. respondents) to investigate the relationship between life satisfaction and the business cycle. What they found was that well-being is two to eight times more sensitive to negative economic times: Psychologically, a recession hurts a lot more than a boom helps.

This article was published by The Atlantic on October 9, 2014
Link to article here

Related publications and films
The untold story of the recession: the psychological cost
The psychological cost of a few years of recession can wipe out the benefits of many years of growth. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve of the Centre for Economic Performance explains his latest research on the effect of the recent recession on people's wellbeing.
View here.

'Individual Experience of Positive and Negative Growth is Asymmetric: Evidence from Subjective Well-being Data', Femke De Keulenaer, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Georgios Kavetsos, Michael I. Norton, Bert Van Landeghem and George W. Ward, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No. 1304, October 2014

Related links
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve webpage
Wellbeing Programme webpage

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