Happiness and economics: Happiness as an economic utility

Abstract

This article presents the concept of happiness from scientific, philosophical, psychological, and economic perspectives. It offers a historical look on happiness in economic thinking, starting from Adam Smith, in 1776, and continuing with the views of renowned economists like Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill, William Jevons, Léon Walras, Carl Menger, Paul Samuelson, among others. During this review, the concept of utility is incorporated and the study examines how, for almost seventy years, utility replaced happiness in the economic field. It also shows how the theory of utilitarianism and cardinal and ordinal utility originated from the thoughts of Bentham. Traditional scientific and empirical methods to study and measure happiness, as well as the reliability and validity of these measurements, are also analyzed here.