Read Justin Wolfers first in a trilogy of posts on U.S. happiness inequality at Freakonomics.
Also check out Eduardo Porter’s account of Stevenson and Wolfer’s paper:
It seems odd that happiness would become more egalitarian over a period in which the share of the nation’s income sucked in by the richest 1 percent of Americans rose from 7 percent to 17 percent. In fact, the report does find a growing happiness gap between Americans with higher levels of education and those with less, which is roughly in line with the widening pay gap between the skilled and unskilled.