I don’t want to step on Arthur Brooks’s turf here, but there has been a lot of blog buzz about this MarketWatch article showing that the happiest countries on earth are also high-tax states (Matt Yglesias points to it here and suggests it validates greater redistribution of wealth; more links at TaxProfBlog, DeLong). But one should be careful not to take this too far, particularly when it comes to extrapolating policy prescriptions. After all, what then to make of this new NBER paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers showing:
By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.
The logic that says we should increase taxes to make us happier would also suggest we reverse the material gains women have made over three decades to make them happier, too.