Life satisfaction has been approximately flat through time in Great Britain. Counter to the general US trend, the happiness of blacks in that nation has risen since the early 1970s. The black-white happiness differential has diminished. The happiness of American men has grown. Despite legislation aimed to reduce gender discrimination, the well-being of women has fallen noticeably.
Money does buy happiness.
The paper also calculates the dollar values of life events like unemployment and divorce. They are large. A number of papers have recently shown evidence of interdependencies in utility functions, in that, ceteris paribus, individual well-being falls as others' income or consumption increases. This paper asks if the distribution of income in the reference group matters. A wider distribution of others' income often increases individual well-being.