The global happiness derby
By _Robert J. Samuelson_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/robert-j-samuelson/2011/02/24/ABSZV8O_page.html)
,
Published: April 15, 2012
The Washington Post
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“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.”
— Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina”
We ought to leave “happiness” to novelists and philosophers — and rescue
it from the economists and psychologists who think it can be distilled into
a “science” and translated into pro-happiness policies. Fat chance.
Government can often mitigate sources of unhappiness (starvation,
unemployment,
disease), but happiness is more than the absence of misery. If we could
manufacture happiness, we could repeal the “human condition.”
Somehow this has escaped the social scientists who want to make happiness
the goal of government. They argue that economic output (gross domestic
product) doesn’t measure everything that’s important in life — family, friends
or religion, for example. True, but it doesn’t follow that “happiness”
can be targeted as an alternative. No matter. Their latest brief is the “
_World Happiness Report_
(http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf)
,” which ranks countries by
their “subjective well-being” (the technical label for happiness) as recorded
by public opinion surveys.
On the most comprehensive list, the United States ranks 11th out of 156
countries. Here are the top 10 and their populations: Denmark, 5.6 million;
Finland, 5.4 million; Norway, 5 million; Netherlands, 16.7 million; Canada,
34.8 million; Switzerland, 7.9 million; Sweden, 9.5 million; New Zealand,
4.4 million; Australia, 22.9 million; and Ireland, 4.6 million.
All these countries share one common characteristic: They’re small in
population and, except Canada and Australia, land mass. Small countries enjoy
an
advantage in the happiness derby. They’re more likely to have homogeneous
populations with fewer ethnic, religious and geographic conflicts. This
minimizes one potentially large source of unhappiness. Among big countries,
the United States ranks first.
The irony is that Europe, where the happiness movement is strongest,
generally registers lower happiness. On the same ranking, the United Kingdom
(18) is the leading large European nation, followed by Spain (22), France (23),
Italy (28) and Germany (30).
The high U.S. ranking may reflect national character. “A person who smiles
a lot is either a fool or an American,” says a Russian adage cited by
historian _Peter N. Stearns_
(http://hbr.org/2012/01/the-history-of-happiness/ar/1) of George Mason
University in the Harvard Business Review. Only in the
mid-1700s — the Enlightenment — did happiness become socially acceptable,
Stearns notes. Before that, religious dogma encouraged austere rectitude.
European cultures formed before the change; America’s didn’t.
The relationship between economic growth and happiness is controversial. In
1974, economist Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California
published a study arguing that (a) within countries, the middle class and
rich reported being happier than the poor; but (b) as countries became
richer, reported happiness didn’t increase. This was dubbed the “_Easterlin
Paradox_
(http://tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/qa-what-is-the-easterlin-paradox/)
.” One theory is that people grow accustomed to higher
incomes and compare themselves with those around them. If everyone gets
richer, people at the bottom remain less happy.
Well, if economic growth doesn’t make people happier, what’s the point?
The happiness movement is often anti-growth. Yes, the poorest countries need
growth to relieve misery. But otherwise, “the lifestyles of the rich
imperil the survival of the poor,” writes Columbia University economist
Jeffrey
Sachs in the happiness report. “Climate change is already hitting the
poorest regions.”
This sounds reasonable but isn’t. There are two flaws. First, the Easterlin
Paradox may be untrue. A _recent study_
(http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/EasterlinParadox.pdf) by
economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey
Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania found that higher economic
growth does raise happiness in most countries. Second, even if the Easterlin
Paradox survives (economists are quarreling), growth is essential to
maintaining existing happiness.
Look at the European Union. As its growth has dropped, unemployment has
risen to 10.2 percent. And unemployment reduces well-being, says the happiness
report, through lower income and the “loss of social status, self-esteem,
[and] workplace social life.”
All rich societies already try to balance economic growth with social
justice, security and environmental progress. The happiness movement would
merely impose more intervention. It “boils down to having zealous politicians
regulate the rest of us into their version of happiness,” _argues Marc De
Vos_
(http://www.itinerainstitute.org/upl/1/en/doc/dp_1_uk_final%20versionfor%20website_uk.pdf)
of the Itinera Institute, a Belgian think tank.
Creating an impossible goal — universal happiness — also condemns
government to failure. Happiness depends on too much that is uncontrollable.
For
starters, personality. We all know people who seem blessed — stable marriage,
healthy children, successful job — who are restless, grumpy and sometimes
depressed. Meanwhile, others plagued by misfortune — sickness, shaky
finances, family disappointment — persevere and remain upbeat.
Contradictions abound. Freedom, the ability to choose, is also essential to
well-being, says the happiness report. But freedom permits people to do
self-destructive things that reduce happiness.
The “pursuit of happiness” may be a “right,” as the Declaration of
Independence says. But the achievement of happiness is not an entitlement. The
happiness movement is at best utopian; at worst, it’s silly and oppressive.
--
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