Frames of Reference and the Quality of Life
研究发现，人们适应极端境遇（如瘫痪、中彩票）的速度和程度远超预期，说明幸福感不仅取决于消费水平，更依赖于参照系。对政策制定和福利评估有重要启示。
Asked to choose, most people state confidently that they would rather be killed in an automobile accident than to survive a quadraplegic. And so we are not surprised to learn that severely disabled people experience a period of devastating depression and disorientation in the wake of their accidents. What we do not expect, however, are the speed and extent to which many of these victims accommodate to their new circumstances. Within a year's time, many quadraplegics report the same mix of moods and emotions as able-bodied people do. There is also evidence that the blind, the retarded, and the malformed are no less happy than other people. Ads for the New York State Lottery show participants fantasizing about how their lives would change if they won. (I'd buy the company and fire my boss.) People who actually do win the lottery report the anticipated rush of euphoria in the weeks after their good fortune. Followup studies done after several years, however, indicate that these people are no happier-indeed, are in many ways less happy-than before. As a young man fresh out of college, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nepal. My one-room house had no electricity, no heat, no indoor toilet, no running water. The local diet offered little variety and virtually no meat. And yet at no time during my two-year stay in Nepal did I experience a sense of material deprivation. On the contrary, my monthly stipend of $40 was much more than most others in my village had, and with it I experienced a feeling of prosperity that I have recaptured only in recent years. These observations illustrate the critical role of context as a determinant of human satisfaction. The neoclassical economic model of choice abstracts from context, saying that utility depends only on the level of consumption. Consumption levels obviously are important, and the neoclassical model performs reasonably well in many instances. And yet its narrow focus misses something important. To predict people's behavior, to draw inferences about their well-being, or to make intelligent policy decisions, we must not only know the relevant levels of consumption, but also have an appropriate frame of reference within which to evaluate them.