Alesina, A., Di Tella, R., &MacCulloch, R. (2004). Inequality and happiness: are Europeans and Americans different?. Journal of Public Economics, 88(9-10), 2009-2042.
We study the effect of the level of inequality in society on individual well-being using a total of 123,668 answers to a survey question about “happiness”. We find that individuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when inequality is high, even after controlling for individual income, a large set of personal characteristics, and year and country (or, in the case of the US, ...
