Högskolan i Skövde

In the wellbeing literature, different authors use different terminology. Commonly used terms are happiness, subjective wellbeing, satisfaction with life and the good life. In the literature, you also find many different ideas regarding how to explain individual happiness. I find these ideas confusing. I think that much of the confusion originates from misinterpreting survey answers. The aspirations model of happiness cannot explain three stylized facts. The aspirations model is inconsistent. In this paper, I propose a new model of satisfaction with life. This model creates some order and can explain the three stylized facts. It turns out that we do not need aspirations to explain the stylized facts. The conclusion is that aspirations may exist, but they may not be as important as suggested by earlier literature.