A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness
By JOHN TIERNEY
(Originally published by the New York Times, May 16, 2011)
Is happiness overrated?
Martin Seligman now thinks so, which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pyschological Association in the late 1990s, he criticized his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study life’s joys, and wrote a best seller in 2002 titled “Authentic Happiness.”
But now he regrets that title. As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it?
And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends.
They didn’t savor that feeling of total engagement in a task that psychologists call flow. They didn’t take aesthetic satisfaction in playing a hand cleverly and “winning pretty.” They were quite willing to win ugly, sometimes even when that meant cheating.
“They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.”
This feeling of accomplishment contributes to what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia, which roughly translates to “well-being” or “flourishing,” a concept that Dr. Seligman has borrowed for the title of his new book, “Flourish.” He has also created his own acronym, Perma, for what he defines as the five crucial elements of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), relationships, meaning and accomplishment.
“Well-being cannot exist just in your own head,” he writes. “Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment.”
The positive psychology movement has inspired efforts around the world to survey people’s state of mind, like a new project in Britain to measure what David Cameron, the prime minister, calls GWB, for general well-being. Dr. Seligman says he’s glad to see governments measuring more than just the G.D.P., but he’s concerned that these surveys mainly ask people about their “life satisfaction.”
In theory, life satisfaction might include the various elements of well-being. But in practice, Dr. Seligman says, people’s answers to that question are largely — more than 70 percent — determined by how they’re feeling at the moment of the survey, not how they judge their lives over all.
“Life satisfaction essentially measures cheerful moods, so it is not entitled to a central place in any theory that aims to be more than a happiology,” he writes in “Flourish.” By that standard, he notes, a government could improve its numbers just by handing out the kind of euphoriant drugs that Aldous Huxley described in “Brave New World.”
So what should be measured instead? The best gauge so far of flourishing, Dr. Seligman says, comes from a study of 23 European countries by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge. Besides asking respondents about their moods, the researchers asked about their relationships with others and their sense that they were accomplishing something worthwhile.
Denmark and Switzerland ranked highest in Europe, with more than a quarter of their citizens meeting the definition of flourishing. Near the bottom, with fewer than 10 percent flourishing, were France, Hungary, Portugal and Russia.
There’s no direct comparison available with the United States, although some other researchers say that Americans would do fairly well because of their sense of accomplishment. The economist Arthur Brooks notes that 51 percent of Americans say they’re very satisfied with their jobs, which is a higher percentage than in any European country except Denmark, Switzerland and Austria.
In his 2008 book, “Gross National Happiness,” Dr. Brooks argues that what’s crucial to well-being is not how cheerful you feel, not how much money you make, but rather the meaning you find in life and your sense of “earned success” — the belief that you have created value in your life or others’ lives.
“People find meaning in providing unconditional love for children,” writes Dr. Brooks, who is now president of the American Enterprise Institute. “Paradoxically, your happiness is raised by the very fact that you are willing to have your happiness lowered through years of dirty diapers, tantrums and backtalk. Willingness to accept unhappiness from children is a source of happiness.”
Some happiness researchers have suggested that parents delude themselves about the joys of children: They focus on the golden moments and forget the more frequent travails. But Dr. Seligman says that parents are wisely looking for more than happy feelings.
“If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago,” he says. “ We have children to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want relationships.”
In observing people’s need for accomplishment, Dr. Seligman says, he’s reminded of his early experiments that famously identified the concept of “learned helplessness.” He found that when animals or people were given a series of arbitrary punishments or rewards, they stopped trying to do anything constructive.
“We found that even when good things occurred that weren’t earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people’s well-being,” he said. “It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive.”
To avoid that sort of malaise, Dr. Seligman recommends looking at the basic elements of well-being, identifying which ones matter most to you, setting goals and monitoring progress. Simply keeping track of how much time you spend daily pursuing each goal can make a difference, he says, because it’s easy to see discrepancies between your goals and what you do.
You might also start to question some of your goals and activities, the way that Dr. Seligman occasionally wonders why he spends so much time playing bridge. It’s brought him some clear achievements — including a second-place finish in the North American pairs championship — but he doesn’t pretend that bridge provides any meaning in life. He says he plays for another element of well-being, the feeling of engagement. “I go into flow playing bridge,” he writes, “but after a long tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am merely fidgeting until I die.”
Is playing bridge for the feeling of flow any more worthwhile than playing it just to win? Dr. Seligman doesn’t want to judge.
“My view of positive psychology is that it describes rather than prescribes what human beings do,” he says. “I don’t want to mess with people’s values. I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing to want to win for its own sake. I’m just describing what lots of people do. One’s job as a therapist is not to change what people value, but given what they value, to make them better at it.”
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
You bought it. Are you happy? Money can make you happier – to a point – but not in the way you think.
By Husna Haq, Correspondent / December 20, 2010
(Originally published in the Christian Science Monitor)
By the time the last shred of wrapping paper is recycled and the final crumb of fruitcake devoured, Americans will have spent 12.9 billion hours and $447 billion shopping, wrapping, and returning gifts this holiday season. That's about 42 hours and $688.87 per person, according to Consumer Reports and the National Retail Federation, respectively. At the end of it all, Americans will have a lot more stuff – but will it make us happier?
It's a perennial question: Can money make us happy?
Generations of Americans were raised to believe it couldn't. The nation's Puritan roots bequeathed a philosophy of frugality upon its people. Henry David Thoreau, the Amish, and the Shakers all pursued austere lives. "Money doesn't buy happiness," our mothers taught us.
But contrary to kitchen table wisdom, research suggests it can – though not in the ways we traditionally think. And it could change the way Americans spend money and buy gifts.
"If you think money can't buy happiness, you just don't know where to go shopping," says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of "Predictably Irrational." "Most people just don't know how to use money to buy happiness."
Money, and to a lesser degree, stuff, can make us happy if it promotes the experiences that make us happy, like personal growth and social connectedness, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. "Money can buy happiness if you spend it right."
Here's how spending can maximize happiness:
Maximizer No. 1: "Spend on experiences, not possessions," says Professor Lyubomirsky. Research shows that spending money on experiences like a dinner out, travel, or a massage make people happier than "stuff" like a TV or a handbag. There's an initial thrill to owning something, then we adapt and want more, says Lyubomirsky. "In contrast, we're much less likely to adapt to experiences. And we're much less likely to compare to others – we might compare a car with our neighbor's, not so much with vacations."
Maximizer No. 2: Spend on personal growth and social connections. French lessons, for example, give people a sense of growth and accomplishment, an experience key to human happiness. And they may help us build friendships and social networks, another key to well-being. The same goes for a gym membership, salsa lessons, or joining a professional society. "When you buy an experience – like climbing a mountain, sailing the ocean, or achieving a goal – those experiences give people an amazing amount of happiness," says Professor Ariely.
Maximizer No. 3: Spread it out. For example, research shows people tend to get more happiness from several small vacations (say, three regional road trips) rather than one big one (a two-week Caribbean cruise) because variety ensures we won't adapt and get bored by Day 9 of the cruise. Also, anticipation and recall of an experience or purchase – think planning and mapping out a road trip, then reliving it through photos and stories – can be more positive than the experience itself.
Maximizer No. 4: Give your money away. "When you give money away, you become happier," says Ariely. "There's something incredibly satisfying about helping others that makes you happy." Lyubomirsky conducted a study in which students were asked to do five acts of charity or kindness a week for six weeks. By Week 6, the students reported a significant rise in happiness. Giving time or money, and more important, getting involved in an outreach activity, gives people a sense of purpose as well as fostering interdependence and cooperation – all major happiness boosters. It's worked for Bill Gates, says Ariely. "He's never seemed more happy, eloquent, charming, and relaxed as when he stopped working at Microsoft and started philanthropy."
But if some money is good, more money isn't necessarily better. A new study by Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman put a figure on happiness: $75,000 per year. As people earn more, their day-to-day happiness rises until they hit $75,000, after which, more money has no measurable impact on daily contentment.
But for those struggling with money, more money equals happiness. "It's very stressful to always be thinking about every last nickel," says Gretchen Rubin, author of "The Happiness Project." "One of the greatest luxuries that money buys is not having to worry about money."
(Originally published in the Christian Science Monitor)
By the time the last shred of wrapping paper is recycled and the final crumb of fruitcake devoured, Americans will have spent 12.9 billion hours and $447 billion shopping, wrapping, and returning gifts this holiday season. That's about 42 hours and $688.87 per person, according to Consumer Reports and the National Retail Federation, respectively. At the end of it all, Americans will have a lot more stuff – but will it make us happier?
It's a perennial question: Can money make us happy?
Generations of Americans were raised to believe it couldn't. The nation's Puritan roots bequeathed a philosophy of frugality upon its people. Henry David Thoreau, the Amish, and the Shakers all pursued austere lives. "Money doesn't buy happiness," our mothers taught us.
But contrary to kitchen table wisdom, research suggests it can – though not in the ways we traditionally think. And it could change the way Americans spend money and buy gifts.
"If you think money can't buy happiness, you just don't know where to go shopping," says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of "Predictably Irrational." "Most people just don't know how to use money to buy happiness."
Money, and to a lesser degree, stuff, can make us happy if it promotes the experiences that make us happy, like personal growth and social connectedness, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. "Money can buy happiness if you spend it right."
Here's how spending can maximize happiness:
Maximizer No. 1: "Spend on experiences, not possessions," says Professor Lyubomirsky. Research shows that spending money on experiences like a dinner out, travel, or a massage make people happier than "stuff" like a TV or a handbag. There's an initial thrill to owning something, then we adapt and want more, says Lyubomirsky. "In contrast, we're much less likely to adapt to experiences. And we're much less likely to compare to others – we might compare a car with our neighbor's, not so much with vacations."
Maximizer No. 2: Spend on personal growth and social connections. French lessons, for example, give people a sense of growth and accomplishment, an experience key to human happiness. And they may help us build friendships and social networks, another key to well-being. The same goes for a gym membership, salsa lessons, or joining a professional society. "When you buy an experience – like climbing a mountain, sailing the ocean, or achieving a goal – those experiences give people an amazing amount of happiness," says Professor Ariely.
Maximizer No. 3: Spread it out. For example, research shows people tend to get more happiness from several small vacations (say, three regional road trips) rather than one big one (a two-week Caribbean cruise) because variety ensures we won't adapt and get bored by Day 9 of the cruise. Also, anticipation and recall of an experience or purchase – think planning and mapping out a road trip, then reliving it through photos and stories – can be more positive than the experience itself.
Maximizer No. 4: Give your money away. "When you give money away, you become happier," says Ariely. "There's something incredibly satisfying about helping others that makes you happy." Lyubomirsky conducted a study in which students were asked to do five acts of charity or kindness a week for six weeks. By Week 6, the students reported a significant rise in happiness. Giving time or money, and more important, getting involved in an outreach activity, gives people a sense of purpose as well as fostering interdependence and cooperation – all major happiness boosters. It's worked for Bill Gates, says Ariely. "He's never seemed more happy, eloquent, charming, and relaxed as when he stopped working at Microsoft and started philanthropy."
But if some money is good, more money isn't necessarily better. A new study by Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman put a figure on happiness: $75,000 per year. As people earn more, their day-to-day happiness rises until they hit $75,000, after which, more money has no measurable impact on daily contentment.
But for those struggling with money, more money equals happiness. "It's very stressful to always be thinking about every last nickel," says Gretchen Rubin, author of "The Happiness Project." "One of the greatest luxuries that money buys is not having to worry about money."
Friday, May 20, 2011
The courage to be imperfect, the willingness to say "I love you" first, and the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees...
Excerpted from The power of vulnerability, a TED Talk by Brene Brown
There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.
What do these people have in common? ...These are whole-hearted people, living from this deep sense of worthiness...And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.
The other thing that they had in common was this. They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Family First: Carpio said that one major benefit of being mom to sextuplets is six times the Mother's Day smooches. "They gave me so many kisses that it made me cry of happiness," she said. "I'm so thankful."
Digna Carpio celebrates Mother's Day with her 2-year-old sextuplets and 10-year-old son
BY Erica Pearson, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally published by the Daily News, Monday, May 9th 2011
Now that all of her sextuplets can say "Mama," it was an extra special Mother's Day for Queens mom Digna Carpio.
"Every day I feel more happy - as they grow, my joy grows," said Carpio, 33, after cuddling with her six lovable toddlers - all in their terrible twos.
"I thank God that they're all happy and healthy," said Carpio. Her brood gave her a bunch of red roses on her special day.
Then the family - 2-year-olds Danelia, Genesis, Justin, Jaden, Joel and Jezreel, 10-year-old brother Jhan Carlos and dad Victor - piled into their van for church. The adorable six were a wriggling bunch at the Tabernaculo de Jesucristo service in Corona.
As one fell, another asked for water and all cried out for "Mama" in a chorus. "They walk, they run - and they do fight a lot!" laughed Carpio. "They all want one toy at once."
Digna, 33, and Victor, 37, a maintenance worker, are believed to be the first Hispanic parents of sextuplets in U.S. history. The Ecuadoran immigrant family has become famous - starring in a TLC series called "Sextuplets Take New York."
Carpio said that one major benefit of being mom to sextuplets is six times the Mother's Day smooches. "They gave me so many kisses that it made me cry of happiness," she said. "I'm so thankful."
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Secret to happiness: big government? New study finds that happiness is highest in nations with the most government intervention. Of 15 nations, Norway ranks No. 1 in happiness; US, only No. 10.
By Stephanie Pappas, LifeScience senior writer / May 16, 2011
(Originally published by the Christian Science Monitor)
In a time of vicious budget debates on Capitol Hill, a new study finds that the path to happiness might be through big government.
But the findings aren't likely to be the last word on the topic, underscoring the difficulty of answering the prevailing political question in the U.S. right now: How large should government be?
According to the new research, published in April in the journal Politics and Policy, bigger governments make for more satisfied citizens. Norway finished No. 1, followed by Switzerland and Finland.
The results, which rank the U.S. 10th out of 15 industrialized democracies in life satisfaction of citizens, seems to suggest that bumping up social welfare expenditures would make for a happier populace. But "suggest" is the key word, according to University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, who was not involved in the research.
"The study as a whole is suggestive, but not convincing," Wolfers told LiveScience. "And the reason I say that is it's ultimately a study of [only] 15 countries." [See the rankings of all 15 countries]
Nonetheless, said Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California who studies life satisfaction, the findings are "pretty plausible." Citizens in countries that transition from socialism to capitalism often don't experience the happiness boost one might expect from the resulting influx of goods and services, Easterlin told LiveScience. The reason may be that they lose out on perks like guaranteed health care.
"There really are areas where it seems like the market doesn't do the job," Easterlin said.
Happy citizens
To tackle the question of whether government makes people happy by providing social services, or unhappy by squelching efficiency and growth, Baylor University political scientist Patrick Flavin and his colleagues used data from the 2005 to 2008 World Values Survey. This survey asks residents of countries around the world how satisfied they are with their lives, among other questions. The researchers limited their analysis to industrialized democracies so they'd be comparing a similar slate of nations. Among the countries studied were Australia, France, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. [Read Who's Happier: Europeans or Americans?]
For each country, the researchers measured the size of the government in four ways: the country's tax revenue as a percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), the government's consumption as a percent of real per capita GDP, average unemployment benefits and social welfare expenditures as a percent of GDP.
After controlling for factors that could skew the results, including health and age of respondents, church attendance, unemployment rates, and the level of individualism in the country's culture, the researchers found that the happiest countries were those with big, busy governments. The result remained even when the researchers took into account the fact that government size and benefits can influence variables such as unemployment and marriage rates, Flavin told LiveScience.
"The jump in happiness in going from a country that's low on the government intervention scale to one that is high on the government intervention scale is about the same as the effect of getting married," Flavin said.
Out of the 15 countries studied, the United States ranked 14th for both tax revenue as a percent of GDP and in social welfare expenditures as a percent of GDP; 13th for government's share of consumption; 11th for unemployment benefits; and 10th for life satisfaction.
The effect is largest for the poor, Flavin said, but richer citizens in big-government countries reported more satisfaction than their small-government counterparts, too.
"This is one piece of evidence that we should think long and hard about, what the effect on citizens' well-being would be if we starting changing Medicare to a voucher system or reducing welfare benefits," Flavin said.
Room for interpretation
The study isn't the first to link government intervention with happiness. One of Flavin's co-researchers authored a 2010 paper in the Journal of Politics finding that U.S. states with bigger governments have happier citizens. [Read: Happiest States Revealed by New Research]
On the other hand, a 2007 study published in the journal Political Choice used the same World Values Survey from 1997 to 2001 to compare government size (as measured by the percent of GDP made up by government consumption) and life satisfaction in 74 countries. That study found the opposite result as Flavin's: Bigger governments seemed to make people unhappy.
Justina Fischer, a senior researcher in economics at the University of Mannheim in Germany and a researcher on the 2007 study, said she thought the difference could stem from the different time periods in which the data was gathered. In the late 1990s, she said, the countries studied had left-leaning governments that may have grown the government too large; In 2005 to 2008, when Flavin's data were taken, those governments had shifted rightward.
"Given this change in governments between the 1990s and 10 years later, I think their finding is an effect of conservative governments cutting too much," Fischer told LiveScience.
In other words, Fischer said, there could be a certain balance between government size and private efficiency that both studies are dancing around. Fischer's study, she said, caught people's attitudes during a time of too much government, so cuts to government spending drew them back toward the ideal. Later, governments may have overcorrected, meaning that a tendency not to cut as much made people happier.
Measuring happiness and government size is difficult, Wolfers told LiveScience, not only because it can be tough to define what those variables mean, but also because cultural differences can confound the results. Nordic countries, which ranked high in happiness in Flavin's study, tend to be cheerful places, Wolfers said, while former communist countries are never quite as happy as would be expected.
To get to the bottom of the question, Wolfers told LiveScience, economists would have to conduct larger studies on more countries. The ideal study would randomly assign people to live in states with big governments and states with small governments and then watched to see how happy they become. Obviously, that sort of research isn't possible, Wolfers said, so conclusions about government size and happiness have to be drawn "from a pastiche of evidence." That leaves room for interpretation.
"It's very likely that a Democrat and a Republican would read that evidence and come to different conclusions," Wolfers said. "And that's because we don't have that single perfect experiment."
(Originally published by the Christian Science Monitor)
In a time of vicious budget debates on Capitol Hill, a new study finds that the path to happiness might be through big government.
But the findings aren't likely to be the last word on the topic, underscoring the difficulty of answering the prevailing political question in the U.S. right now: How large should government be?
According to the new research, published in April in the journal Politics and Policy, bigger governments make for more satisfied citizens. Norway finished No. 1, followed by Switzerland and Finland.
The results, which rank the U.S. 10th out of 15 industrialized democracies in life satisfaction of citizens, seems to suggest that bumping up social welfare expenditures would make for a happier populace. But "suggest" is the key word, according to University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, who was not involved in the research.
"The study as a whole is suggestive, but not convincing," Wolfers told LiveScience. "And the reason I say that is it's ultimately a study of [only] 15 countries." [See the rankings of all 15 countries]
Nonetheless, said Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California who studies life satisfaction, the findings are "pretty plausible." Citizens in countries that transition from socialism to capitalism often don't experience the happiness boost one might expect from the resulting influx of goods and services, Easterlin told LiveScience. The reason may be that they lose out on perks like guaranteed health care.
"There really are areas where it seems like the market doesn't do the job," Easterlin said.
Happy citizens
To tackle the question of whether government makes people happy by providing social services, or unhappy by squelching efficiency and growth, Baylor University political scientist Patrick Flavin and his colleagues used data from the 2005 to 2008 World Values Survey. This survey asks residents of countries around the world how satisfied they are with their lives, among other questions. The researchers limited their analysis to industrialized democracies so they'd be comparing a similar slate of nations. Among the countries studied were Australia, France, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. [Read Who's Happier: Europeans or Americans?]
For each country, the researchers measured the size of the government in four ways: the country's tax revenue as a percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), the government's consumption as a percent of real per capita GDP, average unemployment benefits and social welfare expenditures as a percent of GDP.
After controlling for factors that could skew the results, including health and age of respondents, church attendance, unemployment rates, and the level of individualism in the country's culture, the researchers found that the happiest countries were those with big, busy governments. The result remained even when the researchers took into account the fact that government size and benefits can influence variables such as unemployment and marriage rates, Flavin told LiveScience.
"The jump in happiness in going from a country that's low on the government intervention scale to one that is high on the government intervention scale is about the same as the effect of getting married," Flavin said.
Out of the 15 countries studied, the United States ranked 14th for both tax revenue as a percent of GDP and in social welfare expenditures as a percent of GDP; 13th for government's share of consumption; 11th for unemployment benefits; and 10th for life satisfaction.
The effect is largest for the poor, Flavin said, but richer citizens in big-government countries reported more satisfaction than their small-government counterparts, too.
"This is one piece of evidence that we should think long and hard about, what the effect on citizens' well-being would be if we starting changing Medicare to a voucher system or reducing welfare benefits," Flavin said.
Room for interpretation
The study isn't the first to link government intervention with happiness. One of Flavin's co-researchers authored a 2010 paper in the Journal of Politics finding that U.S. states with bigger governments have happier citizens. [Read: Happiest States Revealed by New Research]
On the other hand, a 2007 study published in the journal Political Choice used the same World Values Survey from 1997 to 2001 to compare government size (as measured by the percent of GDP made up by government consumption) and life satisfaction in 74 countries. That study found the opposite result as Flavin's: Bigger governments seemed to make people unhappy.
Justina Fischer, a senior researcher in economics at the University of Mannheim in Germany and a researcher on the 2007 study, said she thought the difference could stem from the different time periods in which the data was gathered. In the late 1990s, she said, the countries studied had left-leaning governments that may have grown the government too large; In 2005 to 2008, when Flavin's data were taken, those governments had shifted rightward.
"Given this change in governments between the 1990s and 10 years later, I think their finding is an effect of conservative governments cutting too much," Fischer told LiveScience.
In other words, Fischer said, there could be a certain balance between government size and private efficiency that both studies are dancing around. Fischer's study, she said, caught people's attitudes during a time of too much government, so cuts to government spending drew them back toward the ideal. Later, governments may have overcorrected, meaning that a tendency not to cut as much made people happier.
Measuring happiness and government size is difficult, Wolfers told LiveScience, not only because it can be tough to define what those variables mean, but also because cultural differences can confound the results. Nordic countries, which ranked high in happiness in Flavin's study, tend to be cheerful places, Wolfers said, while former communist countries are never quite as happy as would be expected.
To get to the bottom of the question, Wolfers told LiveScience, economists would have to conduct larger studies on more countries. The ideal study would randomly assign people to live in states with big governments and states with small governments and then watched to see how happy they become. Obviously, that sort of research isn't possible, Wolfers said, so conclusions about government size and happiness have to be drawn "from a pastiche of evidence." That leaves room for interpretation.
"It's very likely that a Democrat and a Republican would read that evidence and come to different conclusions," Wolfers said. "And that's because we don't have that single perfect experiment."
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
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