The Politics of Happiness
21 May 2014 | Peter Kolarz
Action for happiness is extremely important. But we need
political action as well as lifestyle action. There are many
evidence-based things we can say about what makes us happy at an
individual level - such as the Ten Keys to Happier Living. But there are also
things we know about happiness and unhappiness at a wider social
and political level. This article covers some of the most important
points, which together might be termed 'the politics of
happiness'.
1. Poverty makes people unhappy
There is an argument which suggests that people living in
poverty are a lot more content with their lot than we might think,
and can be just as happy as those living in wealthier
circumstances. But this is a flawed argument. There have been many
projects comparing levels of happiness and well-being around
the world, with researchers using various approaches to
measure 'happiness' and 'wellbeing'. Some ask people directly 'how
happy are you?', while others compare objective indicators, like
prevalence of alcoholism, drug abuse or mental health issues. Yet,
despite differences in methodology, study after study shows that
the world's poorest countries also tend to be the world's
unhappiest, with Sub-Saharan Africa consistently coming out as the
least happy region.
Poverty is not just limited to developing countries, though
hunger, homelessness, fear of violence and destitution are of
course more widespread in some countries than in others. Even in a
country like the UK, poverty is rife: just recently, reports have
shown an increase in demand for foodbanks with increasing numbers
of people unable to afford to eat. Fuel poverty, especially among
pensioners, continues to haunt the country every winter. And in a
recent Shelter campaign, the
homelessness charity noted that 80,000 children in the UK were
homeless last Christmas. This is not just a tragedy - it is a
disgrace! Of course individuals in these situations can still
benefit from Action for Happiness's Ten Keys to Happier
Living. However, these situations cause widespread
unhappiness and the are very difficult for individuals to overcome
on their own. We must work to end poverty, globally and locally, if
we want a happier society.
2. Inequality makes people unhappy
The link between poverty and unhappiness is perhaps
unsurprising. But social research has produced a more startling
conclusion: although higher levels of income tend to make people
feel more satisfied with their lives, this effect diminishes as
incomes increase and from a certain level onwards higher incomes
have no impact in terms of people's day-to-day
happiness.
Why is this? Research suggests that once we have food on the
table, a roof over our head, an education for our children,
healthcare for our family, and some modest amount to spare to pay
for, say, a weekly guitar lesson for your child or an annual
holiday, we have most of the happiness that money can buy. Higher
incomes, flashy cars, mansions, yachts and champagne baths appear
to do little to increase overall levels of happiness.
But also, increases in average wealth mask underlying trends in
how that wealth is distributed. Research shows that societies with big
differences in income levels between rich and poor tend to
experience worse health and social outcomes. For those at the lower
income-end of society this is no surprise. But here's the
fascinating thing about inequality: in highly unequal societies,
even the richest people are less happy than the richest in more
equal societies! Countries with low levels of inequality, such as
Sweden, Denmark and Finland, where lower-income groups get more
help from the state and the rich pay relatively high taxes, rich
people are still happier than their counterparts in less equal
societies like the UK or USA.
Across a wide range of social problems that have a detrimental
impact on well-being - such as levels of addiction, mental illness,
infant mortality, obesity or homicide - countries where the gap
between rich and poor is smaller almost always do better. Just as
with poverty, inequality cannot be dealt with solely by
individuals' lifestyle changes; it requires political action.
Although social scientists have clearly established a link
between equality and wellbeing, we don't yet fully understand why
this link exists, in other words: what exactly is it about living
in an unequal society that makes people, rich and poor alike, less
happy? It could simply be that inequality is a sign of less social integration
and trust between citizens. But another compelling explanation
is that in a less equal society it's 'a long way down' when things
go wrong in your life, with little or no social 'safety net' to
catch you. This brings me to my next point.
3. Stress and fear of failure make people
unhappy
The OECD regularly conducts studies to measure the educational
achievements of children and teenagers across the developed
countries of the world. School children from each country take
tests in literacy, maths and science, so results can be compared
between age groups in different countries. In the most recent study, the OECD researchers also asked
each child some questions about their life, including whether they
were happy at school. The results were startling: those countries
that performed less well in terms of test results often had the
happiest school experience, while the countries with the
best-performing children often tended to be less happy. The extreme
cases were Indonesia and Peru, who scored last and third-from-last
in the tests, but took the top two places in the
happiness-at-school-ranking. Meanwhile, South Korea, worldwide
runner-up in test scores, had the least happy school children.
Fortunately, this does not mean that education makes people
unhappy - there are some countries whose children do well in the
tests and also report being pretty happy at school. These tend to
be countries - such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Nordic
countries - where schools have small class sizes, lots of
independent learning and 'exploring', less standardised testing and
where children are less likely to be divided into different types
of school according to ability.
The link between high academic achievement and unhappiness
applies chiefly in those countries that have turned their schools
into 'learning factories', with long school hours, little free
time, regular standardised tests and selections into high and low
achievers. These school systems are designed to create a
competitive workforce of the future: able to work extremely long
hours and cope with high amounts of stress. This "rat-race"
mentality, already visible in adult life, is in many countries
filtering through into childhood, preparing people from an ever
younger age for aggressive competition in the global economy.
There are several examples of the toll this global
competitiveness is taking on happiness and wellbeing - including
longer working hours and increasing prevalence of mental health
problems. Our economic system has become one in which the 'winner
takes all', and whoever works the hardest and the longest for the
lowest price may yet be spared the threat of unemployment and
social exclusion. Aside from the poverty and inequality that this
system entails, it also forces people into lifestyles of stress,
anxiety and denial of basic human needs; lifestyles that make us
unhappy.
4. Unhappiness in childhood breeds life-long
problems
We know from research in child psychology that unhappy or
traumatic childhoods lead to difficulties in later life that can be
hard to resolve. Individual cases of unhappy childhoods, brought
about perhaps by a family breakup, a particularly bad teacher at
school or a particularly nasty bully in the playground can of
course happen anywhere, and may well cause that person to struggle
more than others later in life. But we must also look at how, as a
society, we treat our children.
In 2007, UNICEF commissioned a detailed study into child wellbeing
in the developed, industrialised world. They assessed the wellbeing
of children in each country in six dimensions (Material wellbeing,
educational wellbeing, health and safety, quality of family and
peer relationships, behaviours and risk-taking, and subjective
wellbeing of children). Out of the 21 major wealthy and industrial
nations, the UK came in last place! The USA was second from the
bottom, while the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were the
four frontrunners. A repeat study in 2013 moved the UK up a few
places, owing to improvements in some select areas - mostly related
to that double-edged sword of material wellbeing - as well as to
the decline of several European countries that have been especially
badly hit by recession and youth unemployment.
Now, it is possible that childhood in the UK is so much less
happy simply because of cultural reasons: as a country, looking
after ourselves is just something we aren't very good at, and each
individual should be encouraged and taught to do more to increase
their happiness and wellbeing. But this is un-convincing: the
countries that do well in this study, as well as the ones that do
badly, line up too neatly with all the other points discussed in
this article. The countries that have high overall childhood
wellbeing also have low levels of poverty and inequality, strong
social safety nets, education systems not too focused on
competition and working cultures with less of an aggressive 'winner
takes all' mentality.
In conclusion
For the UK, it is bad news then: we have among the highest
levels of relative poverty in the developed world, alongside very
high levels of inequality. We have a work and employment
culture that encourages unhealthy competition and drives many
people towards stress and depression, either because they work too
much or because they cannot find a job. We have social security
systems that do less than others to look after the elderly, the
unwell or the unemployed. We have an education system increasingly
geared towards large classes, standardised testing, and competition
and selection wherever possible. And perhaps worst of all, we are
instilling into our children a lack of wellbeing that will make it
immeasurably harder for them to be happy later in life.
As it stands, anyone in this country striving for greater
happiness and wellbeing does so in a social, political and economic
climate that is downright happiness-averse. If Action for Happiness
is to achieve its goals in the long term, we need to change not
just our individual behaviours, but the way in which our society is
organised. Looking in detail at all those countries that achieve
high levels of happiness, and learning from their successes, might
be an excellent starting point.
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Peter Kolarz received his doctorate in
Sociology from the University of Sussex in 2012; he is a part-time
lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, an Innovation Policy
Consultant for the Technopolis Group, and a contributor to the
online magazine BusinessWorks.