The Political Economist

The link between income and happiness  has been one of the most hotly contested relationships among social scientists. Many researchers from various branches of social sciences have repeatedly denied the existence of a causal relationship between income and happiness (despite overwhelming evidence on how the  great rise in living standards  was led by the significant increase of post-Industrial Revolution incomes per capita), with the obvious normative conclusion being that having more money is not that important to us after all.  Well it just happens that it is important. In an article published last month in the New Yorker entitled "The Case for Free Money" , the author  James Surowiecki  (the Wisdom of Crowds guy) makes a compelling case in favor of universal basic income - a policy proposal (rejected in a referendum in Switzerland earlier this year) where every adult citizen of a country would each year receive a guaranteed basic income. I...

A recent paper published in PNAS by Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton (last year's Nobel prize winner ) reported a stunning finding: there has been a significant increase in mortality and morbidity among middle-aged non-Hispanic white men and women in the US over the past 15 years . The causes have been attributed to suicide, and drug and alcohol abuse. The graphs below summarize the findings: Mortality in selected countries, 1990-2013. USW stands for US white. USH stands for US hispanics. Source: Case & Deaton (2015) "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 112(49) December 8th 2015. Mortality by cause, US white non-Hispanics, 49-54. Source: Case & Deaton (2015) "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(49) Dec...