Some years ago, scholars and commentators of the left-leaning variety opened up a new front in their battle for statism: the notion that the “American system” of capitalism, individualism, and personal and family responsibility may deliver the material goods but simply doesn’t make people as happy as European-style welfarism. Citing early international surveys asking respondents to rate their happiness and contending that self-reported happiness in America did not appear to have risen over time with incomes or GDP, these “happiness studies” experts argued for a more collective sensibility and government interventions to limit income inequality and discourage luxury consumption. A favorite term of art was paradox — there was a paradox of choice (Swathmore’s Barry Schwartz), a progress paradox (author Gregg Easterbrook), an American paradox (psychologist David Myers), a “paradox at the heart of our lives” (Richard Layard of the LSE).

Now the Cato Institute’s Will Wilkinson has blown this rickety raft out of the water with an excellent paper , In Pursuit of Happiness Research, that not only critiques the simplistic definitions contained in much of “happiness studies” but also reports the latest survey findings and studies that show a strong correlation between economic freedom and self-reported life satisfaction or happiness. And what’s this about money not making people feel better off?

It is impossible to review the happiness literature without constantly tripping over the fact that GDP per capita, or some other proxy for average wealth, dominates almost all variables in terms of the strength of a correlation with a society’s average happiness. . . [T]he idea that average happiness has not increased with average income is a bedrock finding of happiness research. It is also false.

Wilkinson, a philosopher by training, not only provides the latest data on all this but also does a masterful job of revealing the superficiality and faulty reasoning among the happiness-studies worrywarts. I can’t recommend his paper enough. Guaranteed to put a spring in your step.