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Почему растущие доходы не делают людей счастливее: эмоциональное объяснение парадокса Истерлина (Why Growing Incomes Do Not Make People Happier: an Emotional Explanation of the Easterlin Paradox)
SSRN
,
2026.
This work is devoted to a theoretical explanation of the Easterlin paradox, according to which long-term economic growth does not make average level of people's happiness increasing. By happiness, we mean the intensity of emotions people experience while comparing their new income with its expected value, or the target income with its original value. In the first case, we are dealing with reactive approach to growth, whereas in the second case, it is proactive. Thus, we point out that in relation to the Easterlin paradox, there is a problem of endogeneity: on the one hand, growth can provoke emotions of pleasure, but on the other, emotions of desire can provoke growth itself. To describe the intensity u of an emotion consisting in the comparison of income y₁ under consideration with the corresponding reference point y₀, we turn to the Bernoulli hypothesis that u = c · ln (y₁/y₀), which is also consistent with the psychophysical Weber-Fechner law and Simonov's need-information theory of emotions. We derive the average level of happiness in two ways and show that under adaptive expectations, it depends not on the income level itself, but on the rate of economic growth (reactive hedonic adaptation), whereas under rational-emotional goal setting, it depends on the ratio of the subjective value and the objective cost of this growth (proactive hedonic adaptation). The logarithmic form of the Bernoulli utility function also explains why growth is exponential. In conclusion, we discuss the problem of expediency of economic growth and the prospects of using emotional approach to explain economic phenomena.
Research target:
Sociology (including Demography and Anthropology
Psychology
Economics and Management
Language:
Russian