Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?

Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence
In this piece, Richard Easterlin investigates the effect of wealth on human happiness. He begins by discussing the concept of happiness, establishing that “it is not confined to economic well-being” (90). He explains that happiness also correlates to social welfare and welfare at large. However, economists rarely recognize potential boundaries between these concepts of welfare, and operate on the Pigou’s dictum, or that “there is a clear presumption that changes in economic welfare indicate changes in social welfare in the same direction, if not in the same degree” (90). Easterlin conveys that this dictum—relative to the study of economic proliferation—is the primary focus of the piece.