May 19, 2001 /New York TIMES
If Richer Isn't Happier, What Is?
By DAVID LEONHARDT
One of the most often-repeated parts of the [U.S.] Declaration of
Independence may also be one of the least influential. People march in
Washington protesting various assaults against the first two unalienable
rights, life and liberty. The third, however, rarely merits mention beyond
the simple recitation of the Declaration's most famous sentence.
Instead, the pursuit of happiness is left to the free market. Americans are
typically responsible for their own emotional well-being, and, according to
economic theory at least, there has never been much mystery about how to
achieve it. Textbooks call this well-being "utility," and they say it rises
alongside a person's wealth. "If there is a more fundamental idea in
economics, I'm not sure what it would be," said Andrew J. Oswald, who
teaches the subject at the University of Warwick in England.
There is a fundamental problem with the idea, however. Over the last
half-century, the United States has become a far richer country, with
ordinary people able to afford items — a second car, a transcontinental
plane ticket, a machine to show movies at home — that only the wealthy
owned before World War II. On average, people today can buy better food,
better health care and seemingly a better life.
Yet the nation as a whole describes itself as no happier. In fact, over the
last 30 years, Americans have become somewhat less satisfied with their
lives, according to an array of surveys. The obvious conclusion is that an
everyday cliché may in fact have a more accurate take on modern life than
Economics 101: money really cannot buy happiness.
That hardly passes for credible social science, though. And so a growing
group of economists are now shedding the profession's traditional
skepticism about personal interviews and are scouring survey data in an
effort to explain the contradiction. In doing so, they have rejected their
discipline's circular view of happiness, that people choose to do what
makes them happy and what makes them happy is what they choose to do. Thus,
asking them whether they are happy is unnecessary.
The happiness researchers are joining psychologists and sociologists who
have been studying the issue for years. Last fall, for example, the Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton opened a
Center for Health and Well- Being. Nearly half of the professors associated
with the center, including its director, are economists.
One of the field's most intriguing early conclusions holds that money does
indeed make people happier but that it is less potent than imagined. When
people inherit a large sum of money, for instance, they become more
satisfied with their lives, according to recent research. But over the last
60 years, and particularly the last 30, a powerful set of social forces has
outweighed the effect that rising incomes have had on people's well- being.
People work more hours, lose their jobs more often and, most importantly,
get married less and divorced more than they did in the past.
All that helps explain why the average American family could have received
a 16 percent raise between 1970 and 1999, while the percentage of people
who described themselves as "very happy" fell from 36 percent to 29
percent. "Money does buy happiness," said David G. Blanchflower, an
economist at Dartmouth, who with Mr.. Oswald has studied well- being in
England and the United States. "It just hasn't bought enough."
Statisticians call this Simpson's paradox. In England, for example, married
people are as a group happier than they were three decades ago. Unmarried
people are, too. But because the ranks of the unmarried have grown and
because unmarried people are not as satisfied as married people, overall
happiness has still declined.
for more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/19/arts/19HAPP.html
I wonder: can "happiness" be described as a scalar number? or it a vector?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
