Quotation archive
“Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and a decline in reported happiness.”
Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman · Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being
Quote record
Author
Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman
Source
Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being
Chapter / location
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2004
Tradition
diener · well-being · money · life-satisfaction · positive-psychology · economics
Source information
From Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2004.
Original language: English
Translation
Translated from English into English using a named scholarly edition.
Context
Read the contextual commentary in this archive entry.
Interpretation
Ed Diener and Martin Seligman on well-being: economic output has risen steeply, yet life satisfaction has not — the founding finding of the science of subjective well-being.
Knowledge network
Related Archive Records
Context
Diener's research program defined well-being as subjective well-being: a person's own assessment of life satisfaction plus the balance of positive and negative feelings. "Beyond Money" summarized three decades of that research for a policy audience.
The paradox at the center of the report was not entirely new — Richard Easterlin had described it in the 1970s — but the scale of the evidence and the clarity of the presentation made it impossible to ignore. The sentence is the report's thesis in one line.
Significance
The sentence undercuts the assumption that economic growth is the same thing as human progress. If the goal of policy and of life is well-being, then the instruments must change: measure satisfaction, not just output.
For the individual, the finding is a license to question the arithmetic of acquisition — to ask what actually moves well-being rather than what merely raises income. Explore the theme in can money buy happiness, how to escape the hedonic treadmill, and what is subjective well-being.
Related Learning
- Explore the evidence in can money buy happiness and what is subjective well-being.
- Read the companion insight in Gilbert on happiness forecasting and Lyubomirsky on happiness.
- Continue with well-being, satisfaction, and the Happiness & The Good Life learning path.
Sources
- Diener, E., and Seligman, M. E. P. "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being." Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5(1), 2004.
- "Well-Being." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/
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Archive references
Sources
- 01Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-BeingBy Diener, E., and Seligman, M. E. P.Diener, E., and Seligman, M. E. P., 'Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,' Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5(1), 2004.
- 02Well-BeingBy Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyConsult source
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Quality check completed 2026-08-09