happiness policies
I talked earlier this year about recent academic challenges to the Easterlin Paradox, which examines the links between wealth and happiness and suggests, once basic needs are met, more wealth doesn’t mean greater happiness. Â Worldchanging.com looks at the paradox this week and suggests a more complex relationship - wealth does make a difference to happiness but if you get used to ever increasing wealth a habitation effect develops as expectations and standards change. The bar by which we measure our happiness is raises, cancelling out any relative increase in happiness are lost to increased expectations. So for instance in the U.S. rates of anxiety and depression have increased 10-fold in the past 50 years.
Whatever the cause, the researchers agree on one thing, the link between wealth and happiness isn’t about consumption. As Stevenson points out, it’s not about going out and buying more, but about having freedom from pain and worry, and having more days of enjoyment and more choice about what you do with those days that’s associated with happiness. So, what policies would give us less pain and more fun?
Good question.
It seems helping people to be happy might be as much about protecting them from the fear of future poverty and want as it is about improving their current economic status. This would suggest we should invest in healthcare (especially preventative healthcare), environmental protection and strong healthy local communities.
Worldchanging finishes suggesting we need to look specifically at policies do increase happiness (rather than wealth) and that this could include things like fostering communities and relationships, and supporting policies that help us manage health and work balances, Â relearning how to live in cities, making use of public transportation, and living on less resources.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Token hard-to-do-all-that-without-wealth comment.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Ecclesiastes 6:10-11
10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.
11 When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes?
August 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am
“look specifically at policies do increase happiness….that this could include things like…. making use of public transportation”
You really have lost the plot, haven’t you.
And as Stephen points out, you can’t do any of this unless you’re generating surplus wealth. I presume you would want to redistribute more of it, which will drive those who have it offshore, leaving you with even less.
Unless you can come up with “how”, it’s pie-in-the-sky stuff.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
BluePeter, StephenR - I believe we can do all those things with the money we have. They’re not expensive (that was the point of the article), but they do require the political will to do so.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
If you’re right then george, a good addendum would be ‘this is how we could realign current spending’, but is hardly that kind of article. Certainly are some points about levels of depression etc rising along with wealth (as long as one accounts for increased ability to diagnose).
I do note (Blue Peter) that frog does not specifically advocate doing what the article says, so one can only suspect.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I must point out that it is not the role of government to promote happiness, cuddly clouds and free rainbows for all. Government’s role is primarily to keep the country ticking over and defend it, so that people can live happy lives within it without the government getting in their way.
Yes, wealth doesn’t bring happiness to the wealthy person. But it can provide an income to all the people employed by that wealthy person, making them happier than if they were in abject poverty.
If you want to promote happiness, promote families rather than undermining them. Allow parents to choose how to discipline their children, how to school them, what food they eat at lunchtime - trust them to raise their own children without the state interfering. Make the tax system work for them so they have enough money to live comfortably without having to get government handouts (working for families). Promote businesses so there are jobs available for them. And reduce their costs (less red tape, lower taxes) so they don’t need as much money in the first place.
Unfortunately the Greens appear to be heading in completely the opposite direction to happiness.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I’ve been poor.
I’ve been lower middle-class.
I’ve been rich.
You know which state makes me happiest?
As David Lee Roth once pointed out “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it “
August 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Mr Dennis, sounding Libertarian-y there (fair enough)…no mention of the way government services and spending can help all those families then?
August 26th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I consider the original discussion article to be very interesting.
Happiness is a very personal, very inner being type of thing, in my opinion/belief. However, I quickly add that having the basics covered of food, shelter, health needs being met, and a chance to earn money is the foundation for us all.
Despite my patner’s critical ill health, our very very modest circumstances, as I have long since been medically retired, we are more happy now, deep within ourselves than ever before.
Yes, for sure, the community, the country as a whole does need everyone to contribute to the common wealth, in ways small or large. Money does not buy happiness but it does supply the basic creature comforts.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
StephenR, conservatives are generally economically liberal (warning, major generalisation!), so no surprise that I sound libertarian-y sometimes! Our actual policies are to modify government services and spending to best help families, while moving to a lower tax (and therefore lower expenditure) situation. That doesn’t mean every single one of our policies goes in that direction of course but that is the overall thrust.
http://www.familyparty.org.nz/policy/the-family-policy
August 26th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Not that much of a major generalisation if you ignore the American Right/Conservatives, who seem to be a law unto themselves.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
the McGillicuddy Serious Party ideology of “the most fun for the most people” suddenly looks very sensible.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Heh, that’s really not far off ‘maximum utility’.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
happyness is the perceived freedom to make ones own choices and to through those choices be able to meet ones needs. That requires a libertarian society and prosperous economy so that one can make of oneself what they choose; something I might point out that neither labour or national truley advocate.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
yay for utilitarianism
August 26th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
who needs happiness when you can have more stuff instead?
August 26th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Urban design is also related to happiness:
Mobility has a more fundamental effect on happiness. Whereas traditional economic ideology promotes mobility to enable economic growth, change and competition, rising mobility has led to breakdowns in social networks and the sense of community…This has profound and negative effects on happiness, particularly on trust. Put simply, if you don’t know your neighbours, you are less likely to trust them — and with good reason, because simple game theory tells us crooks flourish in more anonymous societies.� And “if we create a culture which seeks happiness not consumption, we can avoid environmental damage.�
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=453&storycode=3093738
August 26th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
An Outbreak Of Beauty and Happiness?
In spite of my sense that we are heading pell mell into the gloom of global warming, catastrophic conflict and hopeless mediocrity, I’ve noticed a hopeful trend. Beauty and happiness have been rehabilitated from irrelevant to necessary. It may not be an avalanche, but proponents are showing up in unusual places: a book by an environmental conservationist, another by an historian philosopher, and a Mother Jones article about the economy. Can this portend a trend?
http://www.planetizen.com/node/23369
August 27th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Sad City (Vancouver)
Ours is one of the most beautiful, vibrant, and livable cities in the world. Why aren’t we happy?
[This article postulates that status has a lot to do with happiness and it discusses measures by the mayor of Bogota to make the poor feel happier]
“Peñalosa cancelled plans for a new network of highways and poured his budget into a vast array of parks, libraries, pedestrian “freeways,â€? and bike routes. He handed prime road space over to a rapid bus network. He forced neighbours to tear down the fences they had erected on public land, and installed tens of thousands of bollards to free up sidewalks from parked cars. All this so the city’s poor would feel more like equals.
By the end of Peñalosa’s term, in 2001, feelings of optimism in the city had shot up. There were fewer car accidents. Amazingly, the murder rate fell by 40 percent. When we cruised across town through a network of linear parks, it no longer felt like the Bogotá of infamy. It felt easy. People smiled and waved as we passed. I was robbed only once, and gently at that.”
http://www.vanmag.com/articles/08sept/Happiness3.shtml