There is consent among psychologists and some economists that satisfaction from some events, like income and marriage, is adaptive. We propose a subtle but critical difference: happiness may itself be adaptive. We introduce a theoretical model to explain the emergence of adaptive stimuli. Then we test our hypotheses running dynamic happiness regressions based on panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, the British Household Panel Survey and the Swiss Household Panel. Surprisingly, the autoregressive component in the simplest models is positive and significant. We propose that the hedonic treadmill may be mixed with what we call the “scale treadmill”.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
10268.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: