​The books and articles listed below will help you to deepen your understanding of what happiness is, how to measure it, what affects it, and what can be done to improve it.

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Philosophy of well-being
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Philosophers use ‘well-being’ to refer to what makes your life go well for you, and ‘happiness’ to refer to a positive psychological state. Well-being and happiness need not be the same thing, hence the common (but mistaken) expression ‘there’s more to life than happiness’.
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• An introduction to the philsophy of well-being, 
  ​Fin Moorhouse, Michael Plant, and Tom Houlden.​ 2020.

Two entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia for Philosophy.
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• Well-being
• Happiness​

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Measuring well-being

A book-length document, “these guidelines represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data”:

• OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being 

Two general discussions of the measures:

• Dolan, P. and White, M. (2007). How Can Measures of Subjective Well-Being Be Used to Inform Public Policy? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(1), 71–85

 

• Diener, E., Inglehart, R. and Tay, L. (2013). Theory and Validity of Life Satisfaction Scales. Social Indicators Research, 112(3), 497–527

​Distinguishing between the “remembering self” and the “experiencing self”:

• Kahneman, D. and Riis, J. (2005). Living, and thinking about it: Two perspectives on life. In F. Huppert, B. Keverne, & N. Baylis (eds.), The Science of Well-being. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press

A sceptical take on using happiness measures:

• White, M. (2015). The Problems with Measuring and Using Happiness for Policy Purposes. Mercatus Research, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Arlington, VA

A paper suggesting people make global comparison, suggesting people might be using roughly the same criteria to judge their lives:

• Becchetti, L., Castriota, S., Corrado, L. and Giachin Ricca, E. (2013). Beyond the Joneses: Inter-Country Income Comparisons and Happiness. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 45, 187–95

A paper comparing Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) to life satisfaction scores:

• Dolan, P. and Metcalfe, R. (2012). Valuing Health: A Brief Report on Subjective Well-Being versus Preferences. Medical Decision Making, 32(4), 578–82

An advanced paper on cardinality:

• van Praag, B. M. S. (1993). The Relativity of the Welfare Concept. In: M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.) The Quality of Life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press

An advanced paper on how much difference it makes if you interpret life satisfaction scores as ordinal vs cardinal:

• Ferrer‐i‐Carbonell, A. and Frijters, P. (2004). How Important Is Methodology for the Estimates of the Determinants of Happiness? The Economic Journal

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Determinants of life satisfaction
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• The Origins of Happiness : The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course
  Andrew Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward. 2018. 
  
  
• Dolan, P., Peasgood, T. and White, M. (2008). Do We Really Know What Makes Us Happy? A Review of the Economic Literature on the Factors Associated with Subjective Well-Being. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(1), 94–122​

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Hedonic adaptation

• Luhmann, M., Hofmann, W., Eid, M. and Lucas, R. E. (2012). Subjective Well-Being and Adaptation to Life Events: A Meta-Analysis on Differences Between Cognitive and Affective Well-Being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), 592–615

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• Diener, E., Lucas, R. E. and Napa-Scollon, C. (2009). Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being. In: E. Diener (ed.) The Science of Well-being. Springer

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Affective forecasting

A paper on the fact we’re not very good at predicting how we or others will feel:

• Wilson, T. D. and Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective Forecasting. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131–34

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Social comparison

• Alderson, A. S. and Katz-Gerro, T. (2016). Compared to Whom? Inequality, Social Comparison, and Happiness in the United States. Social Forces, 95(1), 25–54

 

• Yudkin, D. A., Liberman, N., Wakslak, C. and Trope, Y. (2016). Measuring Up to Distant Others: Expanding and Contracting the Scope of Social Comparison. SSRN Electronic Journal​

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The Easterlin Paradox

The Easterlin Paradox is the finding that raising GDP doesn’t raise aggregate life satisfaction over the long-term.

• Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J. (2008). Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox. Cambridge, MA.

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• Easterlin, R.A. et al. (2010). The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(52), 22463–68

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• Easterlin, R. A. (2016). Paradox Lost? SSRN Electronic Journal

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Poverty, income, and life satisfaction

• Biswas-Diener, R. and Diener, E. (2001). Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Satisfaction in the Slums of Calcutta. Social Indicators Research, 55(3), 329–52

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• Fleche, S. and Layard, R. (2017). Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness? Kyklos, 70(1), 27–41

A study on cash transfers that suggests adaptation and comparison effects:

• Haushofer, J., Reisinger, J. and Shapiro, J. (2015). Your Gain Is My Pain: Negative Psychological Externalities of Cash Transfers, Working Paper.

Another study on cash transfers:

• Haushofer, J. and Shapiro, J. (2016). The Short-Term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: Experimental Evidence from Kenya. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(4), 1973–2042

A paper suggesting that making people wealthier didn’t decrease depressive symptoms:

• Green, E. P., Blattman, C., Jamison, J. and Annan, J. (2016). Does Poverty Alleviation Decrease Depression Symptoms in Post-Conflict Settings? A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Microenterprise Assistance in Northern Uganda. Global Mental Health (Cambridge, England)

A paper discussing the fact that China became less satisfied despite economic progress:

• Graham, C., Zhou, S. and Zhang, J. (2017). Happiness and Health in China: The Paradox of Progress. World Development, 96, 231–44

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Effective treatments ​
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• Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies
  Richard Layard and David M. Clark. 2014. 

 

• Uher, R. and Pavlova, B. (2016). Long-Term Effects of Depression Treatment. The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(2), 95–96

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Annual reports
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The Global Happiness Policy Reports are the state of the art on happiness research applied to policy.
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• Global Happiness Policy Reports

The World Happiness Reports include a global survey and analysis of the state of the world’s happiness.

• World Happiness Reports

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Videos

• A happy possibility about happiness (and other subjective) scales
  Michael Plant (Wellbeing Research Centre, 2021)
  
  
• Can I get a little less life satisfaction please?
  Michael Plant (Wellbeing Research Centre, 2020)
  
  
• On measuring and maximising what matters
  Michael Plant (EAGxAustralia 2019)
  
  

• Philosophical issues related to maximising happiness
  Michael Plant (Four-part lecture series, Oxford University, 2018)
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• What are the best ways to improve world happiness?
  Michael Plant (EA Global: London 2017​)​