对“幸福—收入之谜”的一个解答

“幸福—收入之谜或悖论”是指当国家变得更富裕时,平均幸福水平并未随之提高。本文构建了一个规范的经济学理论模型,在个人理性选择和社会福利最大化的假定下研究人们的幸福问题,从而将幸福经济学整合到主流经济学中来。该模型同时考虑了收入和非收入因素,将心理学和经济学中的攀比理论和“忽视变量”理论的基本思想统一起来,在现代经济学中最为基本的帕累托最优标准和个人自利性假设下,探讨了幸福—收入悖论问题并给出了相应的解决方案。研究表明,存在一个与非物质初始禀赋正相关的临界收入水平,当收入尚未达到这个临界水平之前,增加收入能够提高社会的幸福度;一旦达到或超过这个临界收入水平,增加收入反而会降低总体幸福水平,导致帕累托无效的配置结果。因此,随着社会收入水平的提高,政府应当提高非物质需要方面的公共支出,以提高整个社会的幸福度。我们的理论结果也表明了重视社会公平、减少贫富差距过大的重要性,否则人们会由于自己收入相对过少,导致个体幸福度下降,从而导致社会福利下降。

A Solution to the Happiness-Income Puzzle:Theory and Evidence

This paper studies the happiness-income paradox:average happiness levels do not increase as countries grow wealthier.We do so by giving a formal and rigorous economic theory of reference group/aspiration for happiness studies from the perspective of social happiness maximization.We show that,up to a critical income level,which is positively related to non-material status,increasing income enhances happiness.Once the critical income level is achieved,increasing income cannot increase social happiness and in fact,somewhat surprising,social happiness actually decreases,resulting in Pareto inefficient outcomes.A policy implication of our model is that government should increase public expenses on promoting non-material wants such as mental status,family life,health,basic human rights,etc.,when national income becomes large.