And economists will definitely have a theory about your happiness based on where you live. In collaboration with psychologists, a number of respected economists have spent much of the past decade or so mapping our levels of happiness across borders and daytime hours. Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton University, is helping shape the movement to incorporate subjective measures of emotions into serious economic analysis. The goal is to use this new data to inform more traditional measures, like G.D.P. or the unemployment rate, and to influence government policy. Or at least that’s the idea.
Happiness quantification sounds a bit wishy-washy, sure, and through a series of carefully administered surveys across the globe, economists and psychologists have certainly confronted a fair number of sticky issues around how to measure, and even define, happiness. Still, some of the data make lots of anecdotal sense. Given that Nevada was ground zero for the housing bust, it’s not surprising that its citizens are less happy than Coloradans. Other findings, though, are more opaque. Why does western Long Island score several points higher on the happiness scale than most of Brooklyn? (Does being richer make you feel better than being cooler?) Why do Filipinos, who live in a relatively poor country, report such positive emotions?
Though still unrefined, happiness quantification has come quite a long way since 1974, when a University of Southern California economist named Richard Easterlin published an important paper that put the field on the map. His conclusion, known as the Easterlin paradox, stated that people do not become happier as they get richer. Around the same time, the Kingdom of Bhutan (population 738,000; average income, around $5,800) also began plans to measure what it called gross national happiness. These ideas might have had an impact, but nobody paid attention. “The general reaction of economists,” Easterlin told me, “was: ‘This is just subjective testimony that nobody puts any credit in.’ ”
Happiness studies became a hot discipline in the early 2000s, and France, Britain and other governments now conduct surveys of their own national levels of emotional well-being. It can be fairly instructive. Deaton, who advised the French government on its report, said, “The French are pretty miserable.” The United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics reports only a slight happiness dip despite a deep recession. On the other hand, Bhutan’s happiness survey is so complex that I have no idea what the Bhutanese are feeling. Nonetheless, a United Nations committee has called upon the world’s governments to adopt happiness measures. A United States government panel is exploring the issue here.
As more data come in, however, many economists are becoming convinced of one significant change: the original Easterlin paradox doesn’t quite hold up. Broadly speaking, the data now indicate that as people get richer, they report getting happier too. Though it’s not quite that simple. Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan who helps advise the U.S. government on happiness statistics, told me that poor people in poor countries are not unhappy simply because they don’t have wads of cash. They are more likely to have fewer choices, more children who die in childbirth and other grave problems. And while wealthier nations are generally happier, there is no evidence, Wolfers says, that an artist would be happier if she became a hedge-fund trader.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/money-changes-everything.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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