IMPORTANT STUFF: People are happier in places that spend more money on public places like parks and libraries!

“We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society. 

We are purchasing quality of life.”

Meik Wiking

To date there has been no rigorous empirical investigation into how government spending specifically on public goods impacts well-being. An important new study published in the journal Social Science Research finds that Americans report greater levels of happiness in states that spend more money on public goods such as parks, libraries, infrastructure and public safety. The report provides robust evidence that citizens report living happier lives when their state spends more (relative to the size of a state's economy) on providing public goods. Interestingly this relationship didn’t hold when considering all government spending or when considering spending on other categories such as welfare or education. Those categories did not produce a meaningful change in well-being in any direction. That suggests that public spending on categories accessible to everyone has a similar effect on the well-being of everyone.Moreover, the statistical relationship between public goods spending and happiness is substantively large and invariant across income, education, gender, and race/ethnicity lines – indicating that spending has broad benefits across society. These findings suggest that public goods spending can have important implications for the well-being of Americans and, more broadly, contribute to the growing literature on how government policy decisions concretely impact the quality of life that citizens experience.

If money buys happiness, in other words, then so does government spending on libraries!!