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It seems that happiness is busting out all over - like that famous lyric from the classic Broadway musical, Oklahoma. True, happiness is not much in evidence in our battered economy (well, except among the very wealthy), and certainly not in our shrill and rancorous politics.
Nevertheless, an explosion of research and a bumper crop of writings about happiness can be found in various academic journals these days, as well as in the bookstalls. Just look at a few of the outpouring of recent book titles: Happiness: Lessons From a New Science; The Psychology of Happiness; Happiness: A Revolution in Economics; Exploring Happiness; Stumbling on Happiness; Happiness: A History; and not least, Be Happy. Happiness has also been a recurrent theme in Psychology Today, and it's a major focus in the counseling field these days.
Indeed, some promoters tell us that we should make happiness our primary goal in life rather than accumulating wealth. Happiness researchers Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer claim that happiness is "one of the most important issues in life - if not the most important issue." There is even a multi-disciplinary happiness movement in the social sciences that aspires ultimately to replace our traditional focus on economic growth with something like a "Gross National Happiness" index (an idea pioneered many years ago, improbable as it may seem, in the tiny kingdom of Bhutan in Central Asia).
Research on how to measure the quality (rather than the quantity) of life goes back at least 50 years in this country, but it is only within the last two decades that a growing band of happiness researchers have established mainstream respectability for their efforts. Now this work has culminated in a well-funded, high-profile "State of the USA" project, where there are plans for an on-line array of some 300 "social indicators" that will provide a full menu of quality of life measures, ranging from infant mortality to job satisfaction, crime rates and the latest statistics about obesity and sleep deprivation.
Among the many counter-intuitive conclusions of this nascent happiness science, there are some that may seem astonishing:
- Despite the recession, most Americans are quite happy we are told, regardless of their economic and political circumstances, including more than 80 percent of the poor in some study results.
- Although average happiness levels are higher for the rich, their advantage is not as great as you might expect. In happiness surveys covering the period from1975 to 1992, only about 12 percent of the respondents on average described themselves as being unhappy (though many more were only "somewhat" happy).
- Increases in personal income levels over time seem to have had relatively little influence in altering our happiness quotient.
- The growing income inequality between the rich and the poor in this country over the past 30 years has not made the poor any less happy, so it is claimed.
- There also seems to be no correlation between government spending on welfare and various happiness measures.
- Any redistribution of wealth is therefore unlikely to add to our sense of well-being as a nation and might even make wealthy people less happy.
The overall consensus among happiness researchers seems to be that income and happiness are not closely linked after all. Happiness is much more dependent on such things as a successful marriage, healthy social relationships, a high level of job satisfaction, having good health, and even the quality and effectiveness of government. In his book, The Politics of Happiness, the former Harvard president and law school professor Derek Bok concludes: "Happiness, or satisfaction with life, can lay claim to being not merely an end in itself but the end most people consider more important than any other."
So, what's wrong with this happy picture? After all, doesn't it tend to confirm the old cliché that money can't buy happiness? The short answer is that, from a biological perspective, there is a lot wrong with it. We'll explore the issue further in Part Two of this posting, later this week.
