Direct link to the research that the Economist article is talking about: https://voxeu.org/article/advertising-major-source-human-dissatisfaction https://voxeu.

Direct link to the research that the Economist article is talking about: https://voxeu.org/article/advertising-major-source-human-dissatisfaction https://voxeu.org/article/advertising-major-source-human-dis... Of note, is they make not firm conclusions about _why_ advertising makes people less happy in a society, only that it does, and that this is true even when controlling for economic growth and other normally understood factors that influence this. In fact, for a given country, looking at the growth in ad spending in one year, is apparently a good way to predict if people will be more or less happy a few years from now. It will be interesting to see if this relationship holds up over time.