이스털린의 역설, The Easterlin paradox
소득이 일정 수준을 넘어 기본 욕구가 충족되면 소득이 증가해도 행복은 더 이상 증가하지 않는다는 이론
미국 경제사학자 리처드 이스털린이 1974년 주장한 개념이다. 그는 1946년부터 빈곤국과 부유한 국가, 사회주의와 자본주의 국가 등 30개 국가의 행복도를 연구했는데, 소득이 일정 수준을 넘어서면 행복도와 소득이 비례하지 않는다는 현상을 발견했다. 그는 당시 논문을 통해 비누아투, 방글라데시와 같은 가난한 국가에서 오히려 국민의 행복지수가 높게 나타나고, 미국이나 프랑스 같은 선진국에서는 오히려 행복지수가 낮다는 연구 결과를 주장의 근거로 제시했다.
하지만 2008년 미국 펜실베이니아대 와튼스쿨의 베시 스티븐슨 교수팀은 이스털린의 설문보다 더 광범위한 실증조사를 통해 이스털린의 주장이 잘못됐다고 반박했다. 스티븐슨은 “132개국을 대상으로 지난 50년간 자료를 분석한 결과 부유한 나라의 국민이 가난한 나라의 국민보다 더 행복하고,국가가 부유해질수록 국민의 행복수준은 높아졌다"고 말했다. ‘돈이 있어야 행복할 가능성이 더 크다’는 사실을 확인해준 셈이다. 물론 국민 개개인을 보면 돈보다 명예나 다른 곳에서 행복을 찾는 사람이 있을 수 있다. 하지만 국가 차원에서 보면 국민소득이 늘어날수록 복지 수준과 행복감이 높아질 가능성이 크다는 게 대다수의 견해다.
The Easterlin paradox
The Easterlin paradox is a finding in happiness economics formulated in 1974 by Richard Easterlin, then professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and the first economist to study happiness data.[1] The paradox states that at a point in time happiness varies directly with income both among and within nations, but over time happiness does not trend upward as income continues to grow: while people on higher incomes are typically happier than their lower-income counterparts at a given point in time, higher incomes don't produce greater happiness over time. One explanation is that my happiness depends on a comparison between my income and my perceptions of the average standard of living. If everyone's income increases, my increased income gives a short boost to my happiness, since I do not realize that the average standard of living has gone up. Some time later, I realize that the average standard of living has also gone up, so the happiness boost produced by my increased income disappears. It is the contradiction between the point-of-time and time series findings that is the root of the paradox: while there is a correlation at a fixed point, there is no trend over multiple points. That is, in the short run, everyone perceives increases in income to be correlated with happiness and tries to increase their incomes. However, in the long run, this proves to be an illusion, since everyone's efforts to raise standards of living lead to increasing averages, leaving everyone in the same place in terms of relative income. Various theories have been advanced to explain the Paradox, but the Paradox itself is solely an empirical generalization. The existence of the paradox has been strongly disputed by other researchers.
Richard Easterlin has updated the evidence and description of the Paradox over time. His most recent contribution is from 2022.[2] There is also a free working paper version.[3]
Evidence
The original evidence for the paradox was United States data. Subsequently, supporting findings were given for other developed nations,[4] and, more recently, for less developed countries and countries transitioning from socialism to capitalism.[5] The original conclusion for the United States was based on data from 1946 to 1970; later evidence through 2014 confirmed the initial finding — the trend in United States happiness has been flat or even slightly negative over a roughly seven decades stretch in which real incomes more than tripled.
The time series conclusion of the paradox refers to long-term trends. As the economy expands and contracts, fluctuations in happiness occur together with those in income,[6][7] but the fluctuations in income occur around a rising trend line, whereas those in happiness take place around a horizontal trend.
Possible explanations
A couple of explanations for the paradox have been offered.
The first explanation draws on the effect of social comparison. The effect of additional money on how we feel about our lives is not just about how wealthy we are in absolute terms, but how wealthy we are compared to other people.[8][9]
The second explanation appeals to hedonic adaptation and the fact that people get used to having more income and higher living standards.[10][11] For example, the theory of hedonic adaption would suggest that progress from iPhone 5s, to iPhone 6s, to iPhone 7s, to iPhone 8s and so on, have not made a lasting improvement to happiness.
Criticism
Objections to the paradox focus on the time series generalization, that trends in happiness and income are not related. In a 2008 article economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers state that “the core of the Easterlin paradox lies in Easterlin’s failure to isolate statistically significant relationships between average levels of happiness and economic growth through time,” and present time series evidence of a significant positive statistical association between happiness and income.[12] A 2012 article by the same authors and Daniel Sacks returns to this time series criticism with new data, though at times the article asserts that the paradox is a contradiction between two types of cross-section evidence — data for persons and for countries.[13] Outside of economics, two founding fathers in the study of self-reported happiness, Ed Diener in psychology, and Ruut Veenhoven in sociology, have each, with their collaborators, also presented evidence of a significantly positive time series relationship.[14][15] A rebuttal by Easterlin points out that these studies do not focus on identifying long term trends; rather, they are based on time series that are short or have only two observations — in both cases, insufficient observations to establish a trend. The positive association they present is that between the fluctuations in happiness and income, not the trends.[16]
It is sometimes said that the flattening of the happiness trend occurs after some minimum level of income.[17] While cross-sectional data supports a curvilinear relationship between income and happiness in Chinese [18] and Asian samples,[19] time series for China and Japan, both of which start from low income levels, give no indication of a threshold.