Abstract In ‘Happiness and the Human Development Index:

• Main Authors: Andrew Leigh, Justin Wolfers, The Paradox Of Australia, David Blanchflower, Nick Carroll, Richard Easterlin, Andrew Norton, Andrew Oswald, Betsey Stevenson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Human Development Index; The Paradox of; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.379.2519; http://people.anu.edu.au/andrew.leigh/pdf/CommentBlanchflowerOswald.pdf

they claim that Australia ranks highly in the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we compare their happiness data with the HDI, Australia appears happier, not sadder, than its HDI score would predict. This conclusion also holds when we turn to a larger cross-national dataset than the one used by Blanchflower and Oswald, when we analyse life satisfaction in place of happiness, and when we measure development using Gross Domestic Product per capita in place of the HDI. Indeed, in the World Values Survey, only one other country (Iceland) has a significantly higher level of both life satisfaction and happiness than Australia. Our findings accord with numerous crossnational surveys conducted since the 1940s, which have consistently found that Australians report high levels of well-being. * We are grateful to Andrew Norton for supplying us with happiness data for Australia in several recent years, and to