Americans are generally happy, with marital status and income standing out as two of the most important components of their happiness, according to Chicago Booth’s Sam Peltzman. He analyzed nearly 50 years of data from the NORC at the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, which since 1972 has asked US adults about their happiness levels. Converting these responses into happiness scores and examining them across sociodemographic factors, he uncovered these findings, as well as some others. Among them: gender, age, and region had minimal influence on happiness levels, but race, education, place of residence, political ideology, and trust in government and others were consequential.
Sam Peltzman, “The Socio Political Demography of Happiness,” Working paper, October 2023.
Newly digitized data gave Chicago Booth’s Richard Hornbeck and his coauthors new insight into women-owned manufacturing companies and their proprietors.
Line of Inquiry: Richard Hornbeck on the Virtuous Cycle of Women’s Participation in 19th-Century Manufacturing
NYU’s Marion Nestle joins the Capitalisn’t podcast to examine the role of Big Food in public health.
Capitalisn’t: The Money behind Ultraprocessed Foods
Hyperinflation in 1920s Germany set off ripples that persist a century later.
Inflation Affects Behavior Decades after Prices Have StabilizedYour Privacy
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