Two Recommendations on the Pursuit of Happiness

While any improvement in wealth and consumption will likely increase happiness, the increased happiness may or may not last long. In this article we offer two recommendations to make the increased happiness sustainable. The first one—to invest resources to promote adaptation‐resistant rather than adaptation‐prone consumption—seeks to make the increased happiness sustainable within a generation. The second recommendation—to invest resources to promote inherently evaluable rather than inherently inevaluable consumption—seeks to make the increased happiness sustainable across generations.