Don’t Focus on Growth to the Exclusion of My Special Interest!
This smug article in Glasgow’s Sunday Herald perfectly exemplifies the extremely shady way happiness research is put to use for political purposes, and why we must unfortunately keep a skeptical eye on those who brandish alleged data on happiness. Here’s the start:
THE most important item in the Cultural Commission’s report, which was buried unceremoniously last summer, informs us that the Greek government’s ambition is to reduce all measurement of public policy down to one indicator – does it make people happier?
By that index, much of what modern governments do is a failure. Concentrating on economic growth to the exclusion of almost everything else has only succeeded in making us more miserable. The evidence shows that though most of us have become richer in the last 30 years, we’ve also become unhappier.
This is just gobsmacking ignorance. The correlation between rate of growth and the number of people reporting themselves to be “very unhappy” is negative. It’s as easy as checking Nationmaster. The data is plain. Wealthier in general is happier. (The relationship is weak, sure. But a weak positive relationship isn’t no relationship, and definitely isn’t a negative one.)
As I reported in this post on the specious depression statistics, Branchflower and Oswald, “Well-Being Over Time in Britain and the USA,” show that, in the US, the number of folks reporting that they are “not too happy” (on the three option survey) dropped from 14% in the 1972-1976 period to 12% in the 1994-1998 period (which is up from the 1988-1993 low of 10%). Similarly, in Britain, the number reporting “not at all” and “not very” (on the four option survey) was 4% and 11% respectively in the 1972-1976 period, and 3% and 10% in the 1994-1998 period. So where’s the unhappier?
Say! How are the author’s neighbors in the Republic of Ireland doing? Ireland had a jawdropping 7.9% average rate of growth from 1994-2004. That’s 3.0% greater than the country with the the next highest growth, South Korea. (And 3% is itself a very healthy growth rate.) So, have the nouveau riche Irish become less happy? Nope. They’re pleased as punch with their pots o’ gold.
This Harris Poll, based on the Eurobarometer life satisfaction questions, shows the Irish near the top (of European countries, plus the US) in the percentage of the population reporting themselves Very Satisfied or Fairly Satsified. But perhaps more important, the high-growth Irish decisively lead in the percentage of the population who think that their life has improved in the last five years.
In contrast, the Germans, with the third worst growth among OECD countries over the last decade (1.5%), are gloomy. 84% of Germans say they are Very or Fairly Happy, compared to 93% of the Irish. 35% of Germans say their life got worse over the past five years, compared to just 11% of the Irish. 26% of Germans predict live will get worse in the next five years. Only 5% of the Irish think things will go downhill.
So, Richard Holloway, chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, I call bullshit. Bullshit, sir!
Oh, but wait. Shockingly, the chairman of the arts council wants us to know that more government money spent on something in particular will make us all happier. What do you think it is? One guess!
People are not just passive recipients of the happiness that art brings them – they are participants as well. Scotland is full of writers’ workshops and jazz clubs and dance classes and water colourists and fiddlers and pipers and brass bands and choral societies and drama groups and basket weavers and glass blowers and dry-stane-dykers . The doing of these things sees us at our best and most distinctively human and creative. More to the point, these are the activities that energise and fulfil us. They give us joy – the best therapy on Earth.
So why doesn’t government get it? Why doesn’t it realise that happy people are healthier, more caring – less trouble, in fact – and invest wholeheartedly in the happiness economy?
Hmm . . .
According to this article:
The figures from the European Commission on total spending on arts and culture in member states strongly suggest that Ireland is bottom of the class when it comes to [arts] spending in Europe. (Ireland’s per capita spending on the arts and culture in 2003 was only €23.15.)
Yet the happy, fast-growing Irish think life just keeps getting better all the time. How could that be!
Bullshit, sir.
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On the surface this sounds good:
But it seems to reinforce the subtext I see in this blog, that we must start with a trust in growth, and then set a high bar for anything that questions growth.
Growth is the Cato Institute gold standard, by its nature anything else must be baser metal.
Odograph, The bar is set high not by trust in growth, but by acknowledgment of the evidence of the overwhelmingly positive effects of growth. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times before I die. There is no single factor that accounts for the improvement in the human condition better than economic growth. To desire progress implies a desire for growth.
I was educated in the hard sciences (chemistry) and took with my early values both the history of science and the scientific method. Generally that involves a continuing willingness to question assumptions.
Perhaps because of that background, I’m made cautious by any conclusion, repeated a million times.
Is growth good? In general I’m sure it is. Does that disprove diminishing returns & etc.?
Well, repeating an ideological conviction might not be the best way to convince me.
BTW, the first lesson in the hard sciences is “don’t discard data which displeases you.”
As a moderate I think I see data-discarding happening at both ends of the political spectrum, as they “acquire” happiness studies. The argument is often about which data to drop. That’s kinda funny, when you think about it.
I agree that confirmation bias is a real problem. In this case, the guy was saying something that simply isn’t supported by the evidence. Growth isn’t correlated with increasing unhappiness. And I don’t think it’s arbitrary of me to drop the depression studies. The argument of Wakefield and Horwitz is, I think, dispositive. They’re not involved in niggling around the edges of the econometrics. They convincingly show how the whole diagnostic category is broken.
But you drop self-reported happiness too, right?
No, I don’t drop it. I think it has problems, and has limited application, but can still be useful. I think, for instance, that the fact that the depression data is inconsistent with the SWB self-report data is a big problem for the depression data. I think the self-report data is good for picking up big trends in a rough way. The fact that the US & UK don’t register ANY increase in the percentage of dissatisfied people is a powerful objection to the depression data.
I was thinking back to firm statements like:
So, you borrow some from self-reports in order to undermine depression data … is that a case of pick and choose? Am I just imagining a pattern that self-reports which support markets are good?
Ah. I should have said “precisely captured.” I don’t think many despondent people are going around saying they’re very happy, and vice versa. I do think many very happy people say they’re just “pretty happy” because they have an aversion to putting themselves in the top category, don’t know how much happier other people are, how much happy they could get, etc.
So, the general policy here is that studies that show small differences in happiness between societies based on such and such variable are unlikely to tell us much, since its likely that a lot of the small differences are noise based on variations in how people answer the questions. But studies that show big differences are probably on to something.