'The Gender Gap in Happiness'

Article here. Excerpt:

“By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness had declined both absolutely and relative to men. … These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”

This comes from “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” a May 2009 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, are both at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This prestigious institution, known for serious work, now comes up with something as ephemeral as a “gender gap in happiness.”

The study would seem to indicate the extent to which feminism, women’s studies and such, have colonized even the best business schools. Another example would be the “UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders,” an exercise in head-counting masquerading as scholarship, as we noted in a previous Contrarian.

In the politically correct world of the academy, it should come as no surprise that 35 years of measurable improvements leave women with a deficit in happiness. Yet there is at least one good reason to take “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” seriously.'