Can a sibling’s success add to your self-esteem? It depends. Sometimes you can feel better about yourself when your brother or sister does something fantastic. However, if your self-esteem relat…
Monkeys, Economics and Happiness
Behavioral economists might be able to explain our response to income inequality. In a paper on money and happiness, economist Richard Easterlin initially asks the reader how she feels if her income r…
Salary Secrecy
What happens when everyone knows how much you earn? A Boulder, Colorado firm, has voluntarily decided to let workers check a spreadsheet and see what others take home. One employee said she likes it, …
A Happiness Check
The jobs, income and wealth scene is a bit bleak. Unemployment has soared, many workers are earning less, the government owes a ton of money, the stock market has been down, up, and down again, housin…
Which College Majors Earn More?
Although the unemployment rate is 9.2% for the entire labor force, it is 4.4% for college grads (and 10% for high school graduates, no college). But which college graduates earn more? It depends on yo…
Money and Happiness
It is possible, after all, that money can make us happy. A recent Brookings paper from 3 University of Pennsylvania researchers concluded that people experience greater “subjective well-being…