Inequality and Happiness for Citizens
upstart writes:
In most of 78 countries studied people were less satisfied with their lives as their country became less economically equal.
The fall in life satisfaction occurred even where the economy had grown as a whole and people from all classes were generally richer, Dr. David Bartram will tell the British Sociological Association's online annual conference on Thursday 21 April,
[...] He found that life satisfaction in the U.K. in 2018 was similar to that in 1981, during a major recession, in part because inequality in the U.K. had increased so much. The U.K. was typical of countries that had lower life satisfaction over time as inequality had risen, falling from 7.7 in 1981 to 7.4 in 1999 as inequality rose, later recovering to 7.8 as inequality fell.
[...] "When inequality increases, people with high incomes don't benefit much from their gains-many rich people are focused on those who have even more than they do, and they never feel they have enough. But people who earn little really suffer from falling further behind-they feel excluded and frustrated by not being able to keep up even with people who receive average incomes."
[...] Countries where inequality had fallen were generally happier over time, including Poland, Peru, Mexico and pre-war Ukraine.
Dr. Bartram said his research contradicted some previous work that found that higher inequality could increase life satisfaction. "My paper finds the opposite-higher inequality depresses life satisfaction. Previous researchers have compared across different countries at one point in time, but comparing one country to another isn't a good way of learning what will happen as inequality increases."
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