Could learning about happiness improve economics education?

In a bold shift from traditional economics teaching, a group of researchers is calling on universities to bring happiness into the classroom.

Ori Heffetz, professor of economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and his coauthors argue that economics students shouldn’t focus only on GDP and unemployment as economic indicators but also on what makes people happy.

In the paper, “Teaching Happiness (economics) in Your Dismal-Science Courses,” published January 24 in the Journal of Economic Education, the authors propose that asking students to reflect on how they feel about their own lives can make economics more engaging, relevant, and meaningful.

They offer practical ways to integrate happiness research into courses ranging from introductory macroeconomics to advanced electives. Heffetz’s coauthors include Kristen B. Cooper, associate professor at Gordon College; John Ifcher, professor at Santa Clara University; Ekaterina Oparina, research economist at the London School of Economics, and Stephen Wu, Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics at Hamilton College.

“Economics has long focused on objective indicators like income, inflation, and GDP. But these don’t always reflect how people actually feel,” said Heffetz. “Students are naturally curious about what makes people happy, and these topics help them connect economics to their own lives. With the rise of surveys asking people about their happiness and life satisfaction, we now have tools to study well-being directly.”

The authors draw on dozens of empirical studies, both their own and others’. In one study, the researchers initially assessed emotional well-being using yes-or-no questions with 1,000 U.S. residents, conducted by The Gallup Organization. The authors explain that happiness can be measured in several ways through general questions about life satisfaction and specific questions about feelings, for example, of joy, pride, sadness, or anxiety, along with the Cantril Ladder, a scale from 0 to 10 where people can rate their current and future life.

According to the research team, these measures are surprisingly reliable in some contexts, yet can show puzzling patterns in others. For example, brain scans show differences between people who report being happy and those who don’t, and people in sunnier states tend to report higher happiness, but sometimes slightly differently framed questions can lead to different patterns.

Based on the survey questions, the researchers then asked students similar questions about what makes them happy, to spark curiosity and discussion about the happiness of others and in turn how this applies to economics.

The paper also offers the following creative ideas for incorporating happiness concepts into economics courses.

• In macroeconomics courses, students can compare GDP with alternative indicators like the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index or the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and explore questions like, “Should we replace GDP with a dashboard of well-being measures?” and “What does economic progress really mean?”
• In microeconomics courses, students can learn to think of happiness, excitement, and security as “goods” in a utility function. One way to do this would be to rate their own feelings and draw indifference curves to explore trade-offs between emotional states.
• In behavioral economics courses, students can study how their happiness is affected by others’ income. Research shows that people feel less happy when their neighbors earn more, even if their own income stays the same. This could lead to lively discussions about fairness, comparison, and social preferences.
• In experimental economics courses, students could participate in classroom experiments to measure how they feel about different income distributions. These exercises reveal whether people prefer equality or are more focused on maximizing their own gains.
• In public economics courses, students may consider examining how social programs like the earned income tax credit affect happiness. Studies show that single mothers who receive support and work report higher well-being, challenging assumptions about welfare and work.

The paper also highlights ongoing debates in happiness economics, such as the question: “Does more money always lead to more happiness?” One well-known study finds that happiness plateaus at $75,000 a year. But newer research found no such limit. A joint paper in 2023 resolved the conflict by showing that income affects happier and less happy people differently.

“These debates show students that economics is a living field, full of unanswered questions and opportunities for research,” said Heffetz. “Whether it’s discussing mental health, social media, or inequality, happiness economics opens the door to deeper conversations. And for instructors, it’s a chance to bring fresh energy and thought-provoking ideas into the classroom. It has real-world relevance and promotes interdisciplinary learning, blending insights from psychology, sociology, and philosophy.”