a raise for an individual relative to that person’s compatriots adds as much to his or her happiness as the same increase for their country across the board. This casts doubt on the idea that people are happy or unhappy only in comparison to the Joneses. Absolute income, not relative income, is what matters most for happiness.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 270