Economía de la felicidad: Hallazgos relevantes respecto al ingreso y el bienestar

Abstract

This paper presents a survey on the Economics of Happiness; special attention is placed on recent research about the relationship between income and happiness. The paper discusses the epistemological and methodological foundations of the Economics of Happiness. It starts by mentioning the two traditional approaches in the study of well-being: the imputation approach and the presumption approach. Next, the paper explains the subjetive well-being approach, which constitutes an alternative to the traditional ones. The subjetive well-being approach is concerned with the well-being people experiences, and it states that the best way to know it is by directly asking people. The paper goes on with a presentation of the main findings from the Economics of Happiness on what respects to the role of income. It is shown that income plays both a needs-satisfaction and a positional-marker function; thus, relative income matters for happiness. In addition, it is explained that income-aspiration gaps and habituation processes do matter for happiness; those personal values which people use in their assessment of a happy life are also relevant for the relationship between income and happiness. Furthermore, it is shown that income may have a nil impact on some domains of life where people act as human beings and where life satisfaction comes from. The paper ends with a brief discussion of other relevant findings from the Economics of Happiness.