Happiness and Economic Performance
利用西方国家关于幸福感、生活满意度、工作满意度和自杀率的数据，发现经济增长带来的幸福感提升很小，而失业是导致不幸福的重要原因，因此政府应优先减少失业而非追求经济增长。
If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assumes -- without real evidence -- that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on well-being in Western countries. The data are of four kinds: on reported happiness, on reported life satisfaction, on reported job satisfaction, and on the number of suicides. These reveal patterns that are not visible to the anecdotal eye. In industrialized countries, well-being appears to rise as real national income grows. But the rise is so small as to be sometimes almost undetectable. Unemployment, however, seems to be a large source of unhappiness. This suggests that governments ought to be trying to reduce the amount of joblessness in the economy. In a country that is already rich, policy aimed instead at raising economic growth may be of comparatively little value.