The Self-Evident Right to Pursue Happiness

The following is very interesting. The rich have gotten richer, but they've also gotten less happy. The poor have gotten poorer, but happier. What? Here's a NY Times article by Eduardo Porter:

Despite the fact that income inequality — the chasm between rich and poor — has grown to levels rarely seen outside the third world, happiness inequality in the United States seems to have declined sharply over the past 35 years. And that is not because everyone is just that much more cheerful.

According to new research by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the happiness gap between blacks and whites has fallen by two-thirds since the early 1970s. The gender gap (women used to be happier than men) has disappeared. Most significant, the disparity in happiness within demographic groups has also shrunk: the unhappiest 25 percent of the population has gotten a lot happier. The happiest quarter is less cheerful.

It seems odd that happiness would become more egalitarian over a period in which the share of the nation’s income sucked in by the richest 1 percent of Americans rose from 7 percent to 17 percent. In fact, the report does find a growing happiness gap between Americans with higher levels of education and those with less, which is roughly in line with the widening pay gap between the skilled and unskilled.

For the fanatical, here's the original research paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers from the Wharton School at the U of Penn. Here are the key graphs that summarize the research:

This graph shows a rise in inequality:

The following two graphs show a rise in equality: