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During the past forty years, thousands of studies have been carried out on the subject of happiness. Some have explored the levels of happiness or dissatisfaction associated with typical daily activities, such as working, seeing friends, or doing household chores. Others have tried to determine the extent to which income, family, religion, and other factors are associated with the satisfaction people feel about their lives. The Gallup organization has begun conducting global surveys of happiness, and several countries are considering publishing periodic reports on the growth or decline of happiness among their people. One nation, tiny Bhutan, has actually made \"Gross National Happiness\" the central aim of its domestic policy. How might happiness research affect government policy in the United States--and beyond? In The Politics of Happiness, former Harvard president Derek Bok examines how governments could use the rapidly growing research data on what makes people happy--in a variety of policy areas to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.

The relationship between self-employment and subjective well-being (SWB) is contingent on the heterogeneity observed among entrepreneurs. We argue that independence and job control, two commonly suggested sources of entrepreneurs’ higher SWB, are likely to disproportionately benefit opportunity entrepreneurs who were pulled into their occupation choice. A review of the psychological literature on the determinants of well-being further supports the view that more dynamic and impactful entrepreneurship should lead to higher SWB. Analysis of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data from 70 countries (N = 111,589) confirm this proposition. We show that entrepreneurs, all else equal, rate their life satisfaction substantially higher than employees and, further, that this effect is entirely driven by opportunity entrepreneurs.

The aim of this study is to analyse the factors affecting the overall happiness level of Korean residents using neural network analysis, and to identify the resultant theoretical and policy implications. The analysis data for this study consist of survey data collected in 2020 by the Community Well-Being Research Center at Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Administration in Korea; the number of respondents was 16,555. The study employed the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) method, one of the neural network analysis methods. It was found that the most important factor affecting the happiness of Korean residents was their own level of awareness of their social status. The next important was satisfaction with the level of infrastructure relating to their local living environment, the third most important being their level of awareness of their own income level. The study strongly suggests that awareness of the social status of local residents should be reflected in future happiness research and the establishment of happiness-related policies. It also suggests the need to apply new research methods, including neural network analysis, given that big data analysis has proven insufficient in happiness research. In the future, thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, the use of big data analysis methods will become more desirable in providing programmes for improving happiness levels tailored to individual situations.

This paper intends to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and in which interesting directions it might develop. First, the current state of the research on happiness in economics is briefly discussed. We emphasize the potential of happiness research in testing competing theories of individual behavior. Second, the crucial issue of causality is taken up illustrating it for a particular case, namely whether marriage makes people happy or whether happy people get married. Third, happiness research is taken up as a new approach to measuring utility in the context of cost-benefit analysis.

I submit that we are too focused on individual-level happiness research at the expense of societal level QOL research. That is, societal QOL cannot be simply treated as the sum of the happiness of individual citizens. In making this assertion I review and discuss Abott Ferris’ latest book: Approaches to Improving the Quality of Life (published by Springer, 2010).

Manel Baucells and Rakesh Sarin have been conducting ground-breaking research on happiness for more than a decade, and in this book they distill their provocative findings into a lively, accessible guide for a wide audience of readers. Integrating their own research with the latest thinking in the behavioral and social sciences—including management science, psychology, and economics—they offer a new approach to the puzzle of happiness. Woven throughout with wisdom from the world's religions and literatures, Engineering Happiness has something to offer everyone—regardless of background, profession, or aspiration—who wants to better understand, control, and attain a more joyful life. • Shows how a few major principles can explain how happiness works and why it is so elusive • Demonstrates how the essence of attaining happiness is choice • Explores how to avoid happiness traps • Tells how to recognize happiness triggers in everyday life

The introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Happiness establishes a clear need for this edited multidisciplinary volume, by arguing that the study of happiness lies at the center of four major scientific developments: those in the field of positive psychology; biological and neuroscientific advances in the study of affect; positive organizational scholarship; and the recent establishment of national indicators of well-being in several countries. It further identifies distinguishing features of the volume that include up-to-date scientific advances, comprehensibility and inclusivity, multidisciplinary authorship, a combination of a scientific and applied focus, and scholarly but accessible language. The final part of the chapter offers a brief overview of the handbook sections ranging from psychological, philosophical, spiritual, social policy, organizational, relational, life-course, educational, and applied perspectives, through to happiness definitions.

This chapter provides an introduction to the Handbook of Happiness Research in Latin America by discussing three main themes: First, the understanding and epistemology of happiness. Second, the basic postulates of happiness research and its potential to provide sounded conclusions about the drivers of happiness. Third, the important contribution that happiness research in Latin America can make to the general study of happiness as well as to the design of policies that procure a happier society.

This chapter considers the assessments currently used for measuring happiness—and more broadly, for puzzling out the solution to the modernity–happiness gap. Happiness, of course, is notoriously hard to define and measure. Even within a single society, multiple definitions of happiness emerge. Most happiness research seeks to combine current emotional state (which can be quite volatile) with more cognitive assessments of longer-term satisfaction, but still a firm definition remains elusive. Furthermore, a discord is revealed within this gap, as the findings in the chapter illustrate: for most Westerners, Americans included, modern social changes and the ongoing happiness culture simply don't fully mesh; for an apparently growing minority, in their own eyes and those of a society intolerant of sadness, they clash outright, sometimes with tragic personal results.