6. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard, their pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries.

=即使美国人工作时似乎是格外勤奋努力的，可他们对娱乐的追求却使得他们将媒体和闲暇转变成了盈利数十亿美元的产业。 Para. 2

1. By most standards, then, you would have to say that Americans are better off now than they were in the middle of the last century.

=那么，根据大多数标准衡量，你会说，现在的美国人比上个世纪中叶富裕得多。

2. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that they are no happier than they were in 1946 (which is when formal surveys of happiness started).

=然而，奇怪的是，如果你问美国人有多幸福，你会发现，他们并不比1946年时幸福（1946年正式开始对幸福状况进行调查）。 3. In fact, the percentage of people who say they are “very happy” has fallen slightly since the early 1970s ----- even though the income of people born in 1940 has, on average, increased by 116 percent over the course of their working lives.

=事实上，那些说自己“非常幸福”的人所占的比例自20世纪70年代早期以来一直稳中有降——尽管20世纪40年代出生的人的收入在他们的工作生涯中平均增长了116%。

4.You can find similar data for most developed countries. =你可以在大多数发达国家找到相似的数据。 Para. 3

1. The relationship between happiness and technology has been an eternal subject for social critics and philosophers since the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

=自工业革命出现以来，幸福与技术之间的关系一直是社会批评家和哲学家们长期研究的课题。

2. But it’s been left largely unexamined by economists and social scientists.

=然而，这个课题基本上还没有受到经济学家和社会科学家们的关注。 3. The truly groundbreaking work on the relationship between prosperity and well-being was done by the economist Richard Easterlin, who in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?”

=经济学家理查德?伊斯特林在经济繁荣和幸福的关系方面进行了具有开拓性的研究，并于1974年发表了一篇题为“经济增长改变人类命运吗？”的著名论文。

4. Easterlin showed that when it came to developed countries, there was no real correlation between a nation’s income level and its citizens’ happiness.

=伊斯特林表明，就发达国家而言，一个国家的收入和国民的幸福之间并没有真正的相互关系。

5. Money, Easterlin argued, could not buy happiness ----- at least not after a certain point.

=伊斯特林认为，金钱买不到幸福——至少 金钱达到了一定程度以后是如此。

6. Easterlin showed that though poverty was strongly correlated with misery, once a country was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier did not seem to make its citizens any happier.

=伊斯特林表明，尽管贫穷与苦难密不可分，但是，一个国家一旦达到稳定的中产阶级水平，更富有一些似乎就不会使其国民感到更多的幸福了。 Para. 4

1. This seems to be close to a universal phenomenon. =这近乎是一种普遍现象。

2. In fact, one of happiness scholars’ most important insights is that people adapt very quickly to good news.

=事实上，研究幸福的学者们最重要的观点之一是：人们对好消息很快便习以为常。

3. Take lottery winners for example. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their extreme excitement quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods and sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory.

=拿彩票中奖者为例吧。一项重要的研究表明，尽管彩票中奖者中奖时会感到非常非常幸福，可这类兴奋很快就消逝了。一段时间之后，他们的心情和幸福感与中奖之前并没什么区别。 Para. 5

1. So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted.

=人们对待技术的态度也是一样的：无论一种新事物多么引人注目，也无论它使我们的生活变得多么舒适，人们很快就会认为这是理所当然的事情。

2. You can see this principle at work in the world of technology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become common and, worse, frustrating when they don’t work perfectly.