Unemployment and Happiness

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Unemployment & Happiness

1. Introduction
Happiness is probably as the old topic. Most experts such as psychologists, philosophers, even economists concerned with the definition what is the happiness. However, there is not the concordant view for what is the happiness. Happiness should depend on different people. Some people believe that the happiness is the good goal in life. But, other people do not think happiness is the good goal in life because there are some other factors can affect the happiness such as trust, satisfaction with job, satisfaction with family's life, marriage, etc. Therefore, because happiness is a very elusive concept, we cannot judge people is happiness or unhappiness directly. Using the economics to judge happiness could be the easy way even though there are some imperfections, so that will follow the relationship between unemployment and happiness in this essay.
2. Incomes and Happiness
Most economics believe that unemployment is an unfortunate event for happiness; it has negative influence for happiness. According to common sense, it should be connected with income because people always think the less income may make happiness goes down. But is it true? Is more income better? According Easterlin Paradox, “high income do correlate happiness, but long term, increased income does not correlate with increased happiness”(1). “Richard Easterlin (1974) is the first economist to seriously study the data on happiness, he conclude that money does not buy happiness (2). There are two graph can show clearly, from 1945 to 1990, the real GDP per capita (in 1996 US$) had the huge increase that increase more than 5 times. For the average happiness, it should have the similar trend with income, but it was not. From 1...

... middle of paper ...

...02. 95-110. Print.
4. Frey, Bruno S., and Alois Stuzer. “Employment” Happiness and Economics:
How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-being. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton UP, 2002. 95-110. Print.
5. Frey, Bruno S., and Alois Stuzer. “Income” Happiness and Economics:
How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-being. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton UP, 2002. 73-94. Print.
6. Clark, Andrew E., and Andrew J. Oswald. “ Unhappiness and Unemployment.”
The Economic Journal 104.424(1994): 648-95. Print.
7. Clark, Andrew E., and Andrew J. Oswald. “ Unhappiness and Unemployment.”
The Economic Journal 104.424(1994): 648-95. Print.
8. Clark, Andrew E., and Andrew J. Oswald. “ Unhappiness and Unemployment.”
The Economic Journal 104.424(1994): 648-95. Print.

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