It's not my number, so I can't answer how it was obtained. Some poking around points to the following sources:
R. Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005)
E. Diener and M. E. P. Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5: 1–31 (2004)
B. S. Frey and A. Stutzer, Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)
R. A. Easterlin, “Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory,” Economic Journal 111: 465–84 (2001)
D. G. Blanchflower and A. J. Oswald, “Well-Being over Time in Britain and the USA,” Journal of Public Economics 88: 1359–86 (2004).
T. Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976)
Since I haven't read the studies, just works citing them and others, I don't know how they were obtained, or for households of what size. I assume it must be an average, given wildly differing costs of living between, say, Omaha and San Francisco.
EDIT: Er, belatedly I realize that a citation dump can come off as snitty, and I didn't mean it that way at all -- I just mean that I don't know where the figures came from, but that those references might shed more light.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 02:15 am (UTC)R. Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005)
E. Diener and M. E. P. Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5: 1–31 (2004)
B. S. Frey and A. Stutzer, Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)
R. A. Easterlin, “Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory,” Economic Journal 111: 465–84 (2001)
D. G. Blanchflower and A. J. Oswald, “Well-Being over Time in Britain and the USA,” Journal of Public Economics 88: 1359–86 (2004).
T. Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976)
Since I haven't read the studies, just works citing them and others, I don't know how they were obtained, or for households of what size. I assume it must be an average, given wildly differing costs of living between, say, Omaha and San Francisco.
EDIT: Er, belatedly I realize that a citation dump can come off as snitty, and I didn't mean it that way at all -- I just mean that I don't know where the figures came from, but that those references might shed more light.