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Is Everybody Happy? (Michael Goodfellow, 5/5/07) Every now and then, I read an article about "happiness research", where people are asked how happy they are with life, and attempts are made to correlate this with other economic indicators. At first glance, this seems like an interesting idea. After all, in our economy very little of what we buy is absolutely necessary. People buy things that make them happy (or avoid sadness.) So rather than measure the money we have (GDP), or the stuff we buy, why not just measure the happiness that is the supposed end result of all this activity? There's also the moral dimension -- if our current lifestyle doesn't make us any happier, why go to all the trouble? If we're no happier than people in the past, are we really making progress? And of course, there's the traditional moralistic attitude -- that all this junk we spend so much effort to accumulate is a mere distraction from the finer things in life. A first problem with this happiness measure is that if we were equally happy in the past, then it would seem that we would be happy to return to the conditions of the past. But if you actually took a modern day consumer and forced him back to the lifestyle common in say, 1960, he'd hate it! Three black and white TV channels with bad reception, a huge stereo (if you could afford it) instead of the iPod, no computers, no internet for instant information, a huge, dangerous car to drive, all kinds of average commodities missing or no longer affordable, etc. Not to mention a shorter lifespan and higher infant mortality. So I can't get too excited about research that shows we aren't happier, when we are objectively better off and would be unhappy going the other way. This just proves that happiness isn't the right measure. People get used to anything, good or bad, and so happiness only reflects the derivative -- whether you are getting better or worse. And since people have mostly been seeing their standard of living go up, they are mostly happy. Charles quotes this bit from the WSJ: Similarly, we tell our friends that our kids are our greatest joy. Research, however, suggests the arrival of children lowers parents' reported happiness, as they struggle with the daily stresses involved.But this makes perfect sense if happiness reflects the change in circumstances. At least for awhile after a child arrives, your standard of living drops (less time, less sleep, more expenses), so it's not surprising that in the short term, it produces unhappiness. People have children anyway, because we are not simply chasing more short-term happiness. Another obvious factor is that like other social animals, status means as much or more to us as absolute prosperity. When everyone is on the same rising slope of prosperity, no one is getting ahead of anyone else, and so status is not increasing. Someone can feel "poor" today, and be upset about their status, on an income (and lifestyle) that would have made you comfortably middle-class in 1960. And people living in poor countries can feel happy if they have average status, despite being objectively desperately poor. Happiness returns to normal after awhile even when people win the lottery. If a measure can't tell the difference between rich and poor, it's not measuring much. Comparing the self-reported happiness of different times and cultures is an interesting idea that turns out to be worthless. Email Michael at michael@free-the-memes.net For more on a wide array of other topics, please visit the oftwominds.com weblog. 
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