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Why We
’
re Happy
By Arthur
You want to be
happy. I'm going to make this assumption, and I
think I'm
in pretty smart company to do
so. Socrates once asked his students,
not all men desire
happiness?
who does not.
If
Socrates
was
right,
isn't
it
reasonable
to
assume
that
a
decent
nation
will, at minimum, create the conditions
in which its citizens can best
pursue
happiness?
In
the
Declaration
of
Independence,
the
Founders
didn't
treat happiness as some fuzzy concept;
they believed that people wanted
happiness and had the right to pursue
it. Along with life and liberty,
happiness
was
the
connection
between
the
Creator
and
our
nation's
destiny,
and the ability of
its citizens to pursue and achieve happiness was a
measure of the effectiveness and
morality of the state.
What matters
most for happiness is not having a lot of things
but having
healthy values.
But
today's
leaders
and
policymakers
seem
to
have
forgotten
this.
To
hear
politicians talk about gross domestic
product, health-care reform, and
Social
Security,
you'd
think
that
this
nation's
Founding
Fathers
held
as
self-evident that we are endowed by our
Creator with the ability to
purchase
new, high-quality consumer durables each and every
year, or to
enjoy
healthy
economic
growth
with
low
inflation
and
full
employment.
The
Founders
didn't
talk
about
these
matters,
not
because
they're
unimportant,
but because they believed happiness
went deeper.
As a professor of business
and government policy, I've long been
interested in the pursuit of happiness
as a national concept. According
to
hundreds of reliable surveys of thousands of
people across the land,
happy
people
increase
our
prosperity
and
strengthen
our
communities.
They
make
better
citizens
--
and
better
citizens
are
vital
to
making
our
nation
healthy
and
strong.
Happiness,
in
other
words,
is
important
for
America.
So when I chanced
upon data a couple of years ago saying that
certain
Americans were living in a
manner that facilitated happiness -- while
others were not -- I jumped on it.
I wanted to be able to articulate which
personal lifestyles and public
policies
would
make
us
the
happiest
nation
possible.
I
also
wanted
to
know
which of
my own values, learned during my childhood in
Seattle and
practiced during my career
as a university professor, were the most
conducive to happiness. I had always
thought that marching to the beat
of my
own drummer and making up my own values as I went
along were the
right things to do,
and that
traditional
values, to put it bluntly, were
for suckers.
Turns out that
I was in for some surprises.
First,
just what is happiness? Most researchers agree
that it involves
an
assessment
of
the
good
and
bad
in
our
lives.
It's
the
emotional
balance
sheet
we
keep
that
allows
us
to
say
honestly
whether
we're
living
a
happy
life, in spite of bad things now and
then.
You
might
suspect
that
Americans
are
getting
happier
all
the
time.
After
all,
many
（
though
clearly
not
all
）
are
getting
richer,
and
this
should
make them better able and equipped to
follow their dreams. On the other
hand,
there's
a
lot
of
talk
about
the
good
old
days,
when
kids
could
play
outside
without
any
worry
about
being
kidnapped.
And
there's
a
great
deal
of
stress
in
this
country
right
now,
due
to
financial
concerns,
negative
workplace
environments,
and
chronic
health
problems,
among
other
pressing
issues.
But
average
happiness
levels
in
America
have
stayed
largely
constant
for
many
years.
In
1972,
30
percent
of
the
population
said
they
were
very
happy
with their lives,
according to the National Opinion Research
Center's
General
Social
Survey.
In
1982,
31
percent
said
so,
and
in
2006,
31
percent
said so as well. The percentage saying
they were not too happy was
similarly
constant, generally hovering around 13 percent.
The factors that add up to a happy life
for most people are not what we
typically hear about. Things like
winning the lottery, getting
liposuction, and earning a master's
degree don't make people happy over
the
long haul. Rather, the key to happiness, and the
difference between
happy
and
unhappy
Americans,
is
a
life
that
reflects
values
and
practices
like faith, hard
work, marriage, charity, and freedom.
Happiness Predictor 1: Faith
Roughly
85
percent
of
Americans
identify
with
a
religion,
and
about
a
third
of
Americans
attend
a
house
of
worship
every
week
or
more.
These
statistics
have changed relatively little over the
decades. By international
standards,
America's level of religious practice is
exceptionally high.
In
Holland,
for
example,
just
9
percent
of
the
population
attends
church
on a regular basis;
in France, it's 7 percent; in Latvia, 3 percent.
In general, religious Americans
（
those who attend a place of
worship
almost every week or
more
）
are happier than those
who rarely or never
attend. In 2004 the
General Social Survey found that 43 percent of
religious
folks
said
they
were
very
happy
with
their
lives,
compared
with
23
percent
of
secularists.
Religious
people
were
a
third
more
likely
than
secularists to say
they're optimistic about the future. And
secularists
were nearly twice as likely
as religious people to say
feel I'm a
failure.
The connection between faith
and happiness holds regardless of one's
religion. All nonpartisan surveys on
the subject have found that
Christians
（
Protestants,
Catholics,
Mormons,
and
others
）
and
Jews,
as
well as
members of many other religious traditions, are
far more likely
than
secularists
to
say
they're
happy.
It
also
doesn't
matter
if
we
measure
religious
practice
in
ways
other
than
attendance
at
worship
services.
In
2004,
36
percent
of
people
who
prayed
every
day
said
they
were
very
happy,
versus 21 percent of people who never
prayed.
Of course, not every religious
person is happy; neither is every
secularist
unhappy.
Nonetheless,
it's
clear
that
faith
is
a
common
value
among happy Americans.
Happiness Predictor 2: Work
If
you
hit
the
lottery
today,
would
you
quit
your
job?
If
you're
like
most
Americans,
you
probably
wouldn't.
When
more
than
1,000
people
across
the
country were asked in 2002,
comfortably
for
the
rest
of
your
life,
would
you
stop
working?
fewer
than
a third of the
respondents answered yes.
Contrary to
widely held opinion, most Americans like or even
love their
work. In 2002 an amazing 89
percent of workers said they were very
satisfied
or
somewhat
satisfied
with
their
jobs.
This
isn't
true
just
for
those
with high-paying, highly skilled jobs but for all
workers across
the
board.
And
the
percentage
is
almost
exactly
the
same
among
those
with
and
without
college
degrees
and
among
those
working
for
private
companies,
nonprofit organizations, and the
government.
For most Americans, job
satisfaction is nearly equivalent to life
satisfaction.
Among
those
people
who
say
they
are
very
happy
in
their
lives,
95
percent are also satisfied with their jobs.
Furthermore, job
satisfaction would
seem to be causing overall happiness, not the
other
way around.
The
bottom
line
here:
If
we
want
to
be
happy,
we
need
to
work. And
that's
advice worth sharing with our kids as
well.
Happiness Predictor 3: Marriage &
Family
Matrimony
has
taken
a
lot
of
hits
since
the
1960s.
It's
been
said
to
hold
many
people,
especially
women,
back
from
their
full
potential
to
be
happy.
Don't
believe it.
In 2004, 42 percent
of married
Americans
said they were
very happy.
Just
23
percent
of
never-married
people
said
this.
The
happiness
numbers
were
even
lower for other groups: Only 20 percent of those
who were widowed,
17 percent of those
who were divorced, and 11 percent of those who
were
separated
but
not
divorced
said
they
were
happy.
Overall,
married
people
were
six
times
more
likely
to
say
that
they
were
very
happy
than
to
report
that they were not
too happy. And generally speaking, married women
say
they're happy more often than
married men.
Marriage
isn't
just
associated
with
happiness
--
it
brings
happiness,
at
least
for
a
lot
of
us.
One
2003
study
that
followed
24,000
people
for
more
than
a
decade
documented
a
significant
increase
in
happiness
after
people
married. For some,
the happiness increase wore off in a few years,
and
they
ended
up
back
at
their
premarriage
happiness
levels.
But
for
others,
it lasted as long as
a lifetime.
What
about
having
kids?
While
children,
on
their
own,
don't
appear
to
raise
the
happiness
level
（
they
actually
tend
to
slightly
lower
the
happiness
of
a
marriage
）
,
studies
suggest
that
children
are
almost
always
part
of
an
overall
lifestyle
of
happiness,
which
is
likely
to
include
such
things
as marriage and
religion. Consider this: While 50 percent of
married
people of faith who have
children consider themselves to be very happy,
only 17 percent of nonreligious,
unmarried people without kids feel the
same way.
We've all heard
that money doesn't buy happiness, and that's
certainly
true. But there is one way to
get it: Give money away.
The evidence
is clear that gifts to charitable organizations
and other
worthy causes bring
substantial life satisfaction to the givers. If
you
want $$50 in authentic happiness
today, just donate it to a favorite
charity.
People
who
give
money
to
charity
are
43
percent
more
likely
than
nongivers
to say they're
very happy. Volunteers are 42 percent more likely
to be
very happy than nonvolunteers. It
doesn't matter whether the gifts of
money
go
to
churches
or
symphony
orchestras;
religious
giving
and
secular
giving
leave
people
equally
happy,
and
far
happier
than
people who
don't
give.
Even
donating
blood,
an
especially
personal
kind
of
giving,
improves
our attitude.
In essence,
the more people give, the happier they get.
Happiness Predictor 4: Freedom
The
Founders
listed
liberty
right
up
there
with
the
pursuit
of happiness
as an objective
that merited a struggle for our national
independence.
In
fact,
freedom
and
happiness
are
intimately
related:
People
who
consider
themselves
free
are
a
lot
happier
than
those
who
don't.
In
2000
the
General
Social
Survey
revealed
that
people
who
personally
feel
free
or
free
were
twice
as
likely
as
those
who
don't
to
say
they're
very
happy about their lives.
Not
all types of freedom are the same in terms of
happiness, however.
Researchers have
shown that economic freedom brings happiness, as
does
political and religious freedom.
On the other hand, moral freedom -- a
lack of constraints on behavior -- does
not. People who feel they have
unlimited moral choices in their lives
when it comes to matters of sex
or
drugs, for example, tend to be unhappier than
those who do not feel
they have so many
choices in life.
Americans appear to
understand this quite well. When pollsters asked
voters in the 2004 Presidential
election what the most important issue
facing America was, the issue voters
chose above all others was
values.
and
health
care
as
people's
primary
concern.
Pundits
and
politicians
would
certainly like us to think otherwise,
and critics scoffed at the
conclusion,
interpreting
it
as
evidence
that
ordinary
Americans
were
out
of
touch.
But
moral
values
are
critical
to
Americans.
This
suggests
that,
as
a
people,
we
do
best
by
protecting
our
political
and
economic
freedoms
and guarding against a culture that
sanctions licentiousness.
Lessons for
America
The
data
tell
us
that
what
matters
most
for
happiness
is
not
having
a
lot
of things but having
healthy values. Without these values, our jobs and
our
economy
will
bring
us
soulless
toil
and
joyless
riches.
Our
education
will
teach
us
nothing.
There
will
be
no
reason
to
fight
--
or
to
make
peace,
for
that
matter
--
to
protect
our
way
of
life.
Our
health-
care
system
will
keep us healthier, but what's the point
of good health without a happy
life to
enjoy?
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