Chapter 2a person’s happiness is the same whatever their in-
come, once they have experienced it long enough.
However there cannot be full adaptation to income
because, if there were, richer people would not be
happier than poorer people, nor richer countries
happier than poorer countries (cet. par.).Both social comparisons and adaptation are major po-
tential factors limiting the benefits from higher income.
The same may be true of the benefits of education, employ-
ment, partnering, or health if they too are subject to social
comparisons or adaptation. So in each of this sequence of
chapters we investigate the scale of social comparisons and of
adaptation.^21 This is important because, if we want to improve
human happiness, we should focus especially on those areas
where there is less social comparison and less adaptation.
Social Comparisons and Adaptation
In Russia there is a story of a peasant whose neighbor has
a fine cow. God asks the peasant how he can help him, and
the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.” In academia, in 2008 a
website was established through which it was possible for
all University of California employees to discover their col-
leagues’ salaries. Hardly anyone knew about it until, as an
experiment, the prize- winning economist David Card and
colleagues informed a random selection of University of
California employees that the site existed.^22 Shortly after-
ward, they surveyed these employees and a control group.
Employees with less than the average pay for their occupa-
tion and department were substantially less satisfied with