富人比穷人更幸福，但是当一个国家随着时间的推移变得更富裕时，它的人民并没有变得更幸福。理查德·伊斯特林(Richard Easterlin)的这两个看似矛盾的发现被称为伊斯特林悖论(Easterlin Paradox)。然而，它遭到了反证。为了更清楚地说明这一争议，我们区分了五种不同版本的悖论。这些版本既适用于国家集团，也适用于个别国家，既适用于长期，也适用于中期。我们认为，长期是最适合检验悖论的，而且悖论的检验应该始终控制一个自主的时间趋势。不幸的是，这一要求使得个别国家的长期悖论无法检验。我们用欧洲晴雨表(Eurobarometer)来自27个欧洲国家的数据测试了这个悖论的所有其他版本。我们通过估计平均生活满意度的国家面板方程来做到这一点，其中包括人均GDP的趋势和周期性成分作为回归因子。在测试适用于国家集团的悖论变体时，我们发现了对九个西欧和北欧国家的悖论的长期和中期版本的清晰而有力的确认。 Moreover, we obtain a non-robust rejection of the medium-term variant of the paradox for a set of eleven Eastern European countries. On the level of individual countries, the medium-term variant of the paradox clearly holds for the nine Western and Northern European countries, but is consistently rejected for Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. In the case of the Eastern European countries, the medium-term version of the paradox is rejected for Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Poland. As the Western and Northern European countries have a high per capita GDP as compared to that of Southern and Eastern European countries, our results are in line with the finding of Proto and Rustichini (2013), who find a non-monotonic relation between per capita GDP and life satisfaction over time which is positive for poorer countries, but flat (or negative) for richer countries.