Buying alone: how americans’ unhappiness turned into the current economic crisis

Recent decades have seen Americans working longer hours at the same time as massive increases in the level of household debt in order to fuel consumption have taken place. Why did household consumption grow so rapidly, especially in the lead up to the Great Recession? Stefano Bartolini, Luigi Bonatti and Francesco Sarracino argue that this rise in consumption can be explained in part by an erosion of environmental and social assets, and an associated fall in people’s well-being and happiness. They write that people have tried to compensate for the decline of these ‘free goods’ by purchasing more and more consumer goods, and on services to protect against risks such as health insurance and private security.