ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Scitovsky's approach to well-being which provides a comprehensive explanation of the Easterlin paradox, so that the most popular explanations provided in the Economics of Happiness seen as a special case. With the title The Joyless Economy Scitovsky expressed his concern about a possible future in which the economy would not be able to ensure happiness in people's lives. The chapter focuses on both the analysis and recent evidence on how the family, economic conditions, and in particular the labour market weaken the development of peoples life skill. The best-known evidence on subjective well-being in the Economics of Happiness will be accompanied by other evidence on clinical and subclinical mental illness and suicides. Economic and cultural progress has given parents a better understanding of the value of good parenting. Therefore, parent's education together with healthy products for children is the opportunities made available by economic growth in order to improve children's development.
