But over the past 60 years, and particularly the past 30, a powerful set of social forces has outweighed the effect that rising incomes have had on people's well-being. People work more hours, lose their jobs more often and, most important, get married less and divorced more than they did in the past. It just hasn't bought enough. Statisticians call this Simpson's paradox. In England, for example, married people are as a group happier than they were three decades ago.
Unmarried people are, too.
But because the ranks of the unmarried have grown and because unmarried people are not as satisfied as married people, overall happiness has still declined. In a recent paper, Blanchflower and Oswald even put a crude cost on certain life conditions. The data have even offered a bit of an explanation for the dread with which many people view their 40th birthdays. It turns out that happiness reaches a nadir for most people right around 40. Before then, people seem to focus on all of the possibilities in front of them.