For many years economists didn't think so.
In 1974, and again in 1995, Richard Easterlin, now of USC, famously showed that self-reported measures of happiness hadn't risen in Japan, Europe and the United States even after years of economic growth.
But more recent work has questioned that result, and now Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of Wharton have taken another crack at the data and found evidence that life satisfaction did in fact increase as the economy grew for both Europe and Japan. The United States remains the odd-nation out, however.
In the case of Japan, Stevenson and Wolfers found evidence that subjective well-being grew through 1992 but has since declined, coinciding with Japan's recession in the 1990's and slow recovery since
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