Depressed markets? Happiness and free trade.

• Author: Wilkinson, Will
• Position: Free market system's impact on quality of life - Brief article

DOES RESEARCH on happiness prove markets are a bummer? Political scientist Benjamin Radcliff of Notre Dame University, summing up his recent studies in Social Forces and the American Political Science Review, says survey research shows that "the more we supplement the cold efficiency of the free market system with interventions that reduce poverty, insecurity and inequality, the more we improve the quality of life."

But contrary to his expectations, the Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven, editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, found in a 2000 paper that a larger welfare state does not create "any well-being surplus. "A 2001 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by the economists Alberto Alesina, Rafael Di Tella, and Robert MacCulloch indicated that inequality has no negative effect on happiness in the U.S.--unless you're a rich leftist.

More recently, a 2006 study by the University of...