Is happiness inequality falling?

It seems so, at least subject to the usual caveats about happiness studies:

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has fallen in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the “very unhappy” and the “perfectly happy”. Lower happiness inequality is found both between and within countries, and between and within individuals. Our cross-country regression results argue that the extension of various public goods helps to explain this greater happiness homogeneity. This new stylised fact arguably comes as a bonus to the Easterlin paradox, offering a somewhat brighter perspective for developing countries.

That is from a new paper by Clark AE1, Flèche S2, Senik C3. via Neuroskeptic.  In other words, for the variable that really matters for welfarism, inequality is down not up.  Shout it from the rooftops…

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