happiness economics
Submitted by tonyplant on July 20, 2006 - 10:22.
I've previously offered a bone-achingly long post that shares my confusion about the topic Is Unhappiness A Symptom Or A Passing Phase. A handwave summary would be that unhappiness is part of the rhythm of our lives: however, when it persists it can be part of the symptom spectrum of depression. There is professional conflict that suggests that depression is over-diagnosed, and under-diagnosed according to demographic groups (e.g., under-diagnosed in men) and that it is over-medicated or under-medicated. There is little conflict over the life-distorting impact of depresson and its implications both for personal quality of life and well-being (a personal economy) and the general economy (depression can impact people's ability to be economically active). I hope that is clear (yes, your suspicion that I'm at the state of ignorance where all I can say is "One the one hand this. On the other hand..." is absolutely true). I am choosing to bodyswerve any attempt to summarise whether depression statistics should be included in any discussion of happiness economics.
Anyhow. I've introduced more confusion into my thinking by reading the transcript of a thought-provoking debate between psychiatrist Raj Persaud and happiness economist, Lord Layard. As part of the background to the debate, we are told that although research indicates that money doesn't necessarily make us happier, "the greatest predictor of unhappiness...is still real poverty and hardship, with mental illness a close second". It is from this position that Layard argues:
...that public policy, and even how we spend our time, should be more devoted to trying to help people who are very unhappy. There’s another reason there actually, which is in the research and has not been pointed out very much. We know a lot more about what makes the difference, what causes the difference between the misery and average happiness. Knowing what causes the difference between average happiness and great happiness, we have it more in our power (as well as it being a duty) to do more about the least happy.
…Unfortunately this is not the way the government has been thinking up till now. Psychiatry and psychology have been Cinderella sections of the NHS. If you have blood pressure (I have) or a skin problem, or asthma, or diabetes, or whatever, you will almost automatically, at some point, see a specialist. But not if you have a crippling depression which is stopping you from working for a year; you’re extremely unlikely to see a specialist. Not more than 10% of people in that condition will see a specialist, and this reflects I think our obsession at the moment with ‘objective indicators’ rather than the feelings of people, which are what I believe matter most of all. So it’s encouraging that by pointing out some of these facts, there is now a move going on in the government to provide more psychological therapy, which is of course what these patients want, they just don’t want to be put on a few pills by the GP and sent off home.
Unlike the usual discussion as to whether unhappiness is a prodrome for depression in the way that high blood pressure is for heart disease, Layard is proposing a call to action that discusses misery, unhappiness and depression as if they are synonyms. Persaud commends Layard's work for promoting positive psychology as a necessary part of public policy. He disputes Layard's definition of happiness and how it is measured: he argues that we need to take personal responsibility for our own happiness.
Internality and externality are two key dimensions the psychologists feel you can divide the population over. Internals are people who take responsibility for their lives, they believe that they can have an impact on the future of their life, on their destiny. And they believe their destiny is in their hands. Externals, on the other hand, believe that their life is down to external forces beyond their control and they have very limited ability to control their future.
...externals are more prone to various problems.
Persaud speculates that a blame culture is pushing more of the population in an external direction.
And the squeezing out of personal responsibility means that people are much more external in orientation. And it has dramatic implications for happiness, because externals feel happier in the short run, because when bad things happen to them, they can always blame someone else for why it happened to them. But in the long run, because they don’t take personal responsibility for their lives, they’re not going to be successful.
Persaud suggests that the pernicious effect ascribed to television and other entertainment media (similar to the earlier discussion of television) could be mitigated by
educating people as to the dangers of the entertainment industry and then leaving it to people to make decisions for themselves.
Persaud also outlines the research that shows that we are notoriously poor at predicting what will make us happy. Accepting this, he says:
I would be worried about governments saying, well, you know, you guys are really bad at this decision-making stuff; we’re going to take over and help you with your decisions. I think people should be educated about the fact that they’re error-prone when it comes to these decisions, but hopefully with that education they’ll be moved to a place where they can make better decisions over happiness.
Entertainment and public policy are both sources of mis-information and FEAR (False Experience Appearing Real). Both Layard and Persaud discuss the corrosive impact that these can have.
Now you’ve got this extraordinary view, which is obviously completely wrong, that there are many people according to the surveys, people in their late teens or early 20s, who think they’re not going to be as rich as their parents. Now this is completely fatuous. It’s inconceivable that that should come about. And yet this is the atmosphere of fear and anxiety that’s been created.
Persaud summarises the influence of politics on our sense of well-being. Both agree that it would be better if politicans and public policy:
encouraged more that we thought about positive emotions, like happiness and wellbeing. And encouraged ourselves to orientate ourselves towards positive emotions like wellbeing, and that we voted on that rather than voting on fear.
It's an intriguing discussion. I am not convinced that we can only shed unhappiness with the aid of a psychologist or psychiatrist. Intervention-based studies by positive psychologists such as Seligman and Reivich argue that we can change how we experience our lives and the quality of our lives by learning to be happy/more resilient. However, although happiness is a legitimate individual pursuit that can be self-cultivated, it seems as if there is a role for our local and national governments. Researchers like Ed Diener say that it is easier to be happy when there is a sense of trust, safety, stability and security. He says that governments can create conditions such as recreational facilities, working hours legislation, a health infrastructure and transport infrastructure that have a profound influence on people's happiness. One thing is certain, happiness can have a profound effect on our personal and national economies and deserves more attention (e.g., the cost of providing mental health treatment for the estimated 1 in 10 british children who are in need of it).
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Submitted by tonyplant on June 20, 2006 - 15:10.
Following on from yesterday's exploration of Putting Your Life Out To Tender I'm wondering about what bids we might attract for different areas of our life. If you were auctioning off areas of your life like happiness, family relationships, career, health etc. how would you describe them, and what value of bid would they be likely to attract? Do you eat a healthy diet? If you had valuable traits like high resilience, how much would that be worth? Of course, having read Shinga's piece on genetic determinism, how much is your gene profile worth? And is your environment adding to your nett worth or causing a major economic deficit?
Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project
add new comment | resilience | happiness economics | happiness | food | FEAR
Submitted by tonyplant on June 14, 2006 - 14:04.
When I saw the rubble with the provocative question, "What happens when edifices of network TV are rubble and the vacant lot has yet to be developed?" I wondered if the same is true of lots of social conventions, like consumerism and hedonism. Both of them are valuable and have their strengths - but they do seem to be crumbling in their anecdotal strength with reports of a decline in shopping and doubts about the health impacts of binge drinking.
A number of social commentators lament the impact of marriage or relationship breakdown, particularly where children are involved. It seems as if we have crumbling edifices but lots of vacant lots waiting to be developed because we don't know what should take their place. What do we want? What do people need? Are these the same question?
I've been thinking about this because it's Carers' Week and although I've had a good response to the workshops that I've run, I've met a lot of carers who are angry about what has happened to their lives and the lack of support they receive. Some of the carers I met say that they feel like anachronisms. They are abiding by their understanding of family responsibility and loyalty and almost literally being beggared for it while being treated with what feels like contempt by many of the statutory agencies. SOme of them feel that they have traded in their desire for security and a fulfilling career for present discomfort, financial insecurity and worry about their own futures. Yet, what would happen to our social and healthcare systems if carers disowned their sense of obligation and responsibility (a question that I've asked before when wondering what is the cost of doing nothing?)?
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Submitted by tonyplant on June 3, 2006 - 08:19.
I've just learned a new word from Charles Morris: freakoutonomics. In the New York Times (normally behind a paywall but (Economist's View has helpfully reproduced Freakoutonomics), Morris describes the sort of uneasiness and lack of confidence that Ben Friedman wrote about in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.
Friedman argues that economic growth is essential to moral, social, political and cultural progress. He writes that the financial and social anxieties created by living in a stagnant economy lead people to look for explanations and answers in intolerance and fear. Furedi expands a form of this argument to argue for its role in the widespread internalisation of conspiracy theories: "[t]oday, acts of misfortune are frequently associated with intentional malevolent behavior".
Friedman outlines the comparisons that underlie the influence of income on well-being. For the first, we contrast our present and past circumstances: if we are better off financially that we used to be, and we can buy more with that money, then we feel better off. For the second, we use our present circumstances as a yardstick to compare ourselves to our notional peer group: if we are more prosperous then we feel better; if we are worse off, then we feel worse.
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Submitted by tonyplant on May 3, 2006 - 07:40.
Following on from the success of Making Slough Happy the BBC is offering another series about happiness: The Happiness Formula starts tonight on BBC2 at 7 pm.
The programme looks at the power, politics and science of happiness. It explores the finding that although people are three times richer than they were in the fifties, by some measures, most people are more miserable.
In a series of questions that are familiar, The Happiness Formula asks if government should continue trying to make us as rich as possible, or whether they should be trying to make people happier.
There are six programmes so I am hoping for a better than usual discussion of the subject. I shall be very annoyed if there are extrapolations from data relating to depression or the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants. Subjective well-being as a measure of happiness is all well and good but I feel that Raj Persaud among others has made some very cogent arguments against its scientific robustness.
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Submitted by tonyplant on April 12, 2006 - 13:38.
I've previously offered a bone-achingly long post that shares my confusion about the topic Is Unhappiness A Symptom Or A Passing Phase. A handwave summary would be that unhappiness is part of the rhythm of our lives: however, when it persists it can be part of the symptom spectrum of depression. There is professional conflict that suggests that depression is over-diagnosed, and under-diagnosed according to demographic groups (e.g., under-diagnosed in men) and that it is over-medicated or under-medicated. There is little conflict over the life-distorting impact of depresson and its implications both for personal quality of life and well-being (a personal economy) and the general economy (depression can impact people's ability to be economically active). I hope that is clear (yes, your suspicion that I'm at the state of ignorance where all I can say is "One the one hand this. On the other hand..." is absolutely true). I am choosing to bodyswerve any attempt to summarise whether depression statistics should be included in any discussion of happiness economics.
Anyhow. I've introduced more confusion into my thinking by reading the transcript of a thought-provoking debate between psychiatrist Raj Persaud and happiness economist, Lord Layard. As part of the background to the debate, we are told that although research indicates that money doesn't necessarily make us happier, "the greatest predictor of unhappiness...is still real poverty and hardship, with mental illness a close second". It is from this position that Layard argues:
...that public policy, and even how we spend our time, should be more devoted to trying to help people who are very unhappy. There’s another reason there actually, which is in the research and has not been pointed out very much. We know a lot more about what makes the difference, what causes the difference between the misery and average happiness. Knowing what causes the difference between average happiness and great happiness, we have it more in our power (as well as it being a duty) to do more about the least happy.
…Unfortunately this is not the way the government has been thinking up till now. Psychiatry and psychology have been Cinderella sections of the NHS. If you have blood pressure (I have) or a skin problem, or asthma, or diabetes, or whatever, you will almost automatically, at some point, see a specialist. But not if you have a crippling depression which is stopping you from working for a year; you’re extremely unlikely to see a specialist. Not more than 10% of people in that condition will see a specialist, and this reflects I think our obsession at the moment with ‘objective indicators’ rather than the feelings of people, which are what I believe matter most of all. So it’s encouraging that by pointing out some of these facts, there is now a move going on in the government to provide more psychological therapy, which is of course what these patients want, they just don’t want to be put on a few pills by the GP and sent off home.
Unlike the usual discussion as to whether unhappiness is a prodrome for depression in the way that high blood pressure is for heart disease, Layard is proposing a call to action that discusses misery, unhappiness and depression as if they are synonyms. Persaud commends Layard's work for promoting positive psychology as a necessary part of public policy. He disputes Layard's definition of happiness and how it is measured: he argues that we need to take personal responsibility for our own happiness.
Internality and externality are two key dimensions the psychologists feel you can divide the population over. Internals are people who take responsibility for their lives, they believe that they can have an impact on the future of their life, on their destiny. And they believe their destiny is in their hands. Externals, on the other hand, believe that their life is down to external forces beyond their control and they have very limited ability to control their future.
...externals are more prone to various problems.
Persaud speculates that a blame culture is pushing more of the population in an external direction.
And the squeezing out of personal responsibility means that people are much more external in orientation. And it has dramatic implications for happiness, because externals feel happier in the short run, because when bad things happen to them, they can always blame someone else for why it happened to them. But in the long run, because they don’t take personal responsibility for their lives, they’re not going to be successful.
Persaud suggests that the pernicious effect ascribed to television and other entertainment media (similar to the earlier discussion of television) could be mitigated by
educating people as to the dangers of the entertainment industry and then leaving it to people to make decisions for themselves.
Persaud also outlines the research that shows that we are notoriously poor at predicting what will make us happy. Accepting this, he says:
I would be worried about governments saying, well, you know, you guys are really bad at this decision-making stuff; we’re going to take over and help you with your decisions. I think people should be educated about the fact that they’re error-prone when it comes to these decisions, but hopefully with that education they’ll be moved to a place where they can make better decisions over happiness.
Entertainment and public policy are both sources of mis-information and FEAR (False Experience Appearing Real). Both Layard and Persaud discuss the corrosive impact that these can have.
Now you’ve got this extraordinary view, which is obviously completely wrong, that there are many people according to the surveys, people in their late teens or early 20s, who think they’re not going to be as rich as their parents. Now this is completely fatuous. It’s inconceivable that that should come about. And yet this is the atmosphere of fear and anxiety that’s been created.
Persaud summarises the influence of politics on our sense of well-being. Both agree that it would be better if politicans and public policy:
encouraged more that we thought about positive emotions, like happiness and wellbeing. And encouraged ourselves to orientate ourselves towards positive emotions like wellbeing, and that we voted on that rather than voting on fear.
It's an intriguing discussion. I am not convinced that we can only shed unhappiness with the aid of a psychologist or psychiatrist. We can change how we experience our lives and the quality of our lives by learning to be happy. However, although happiness is a legitimate individual pursuit that can be self-cultivated, it seems as if there is a role for our local and national governments. Researchers like Ed Diener say that it is easier to be happy when there is a sense of trust, safety, stability and security. He says that governments can create conditions such as recreational facilities, working hours legislation, a health infrastructure and transport infrastructure that have a profound influence on people's happiness.
read more | add new comment | resilience | persaud | Layard | happiness economics | happiness | FEAR
Submitted by tonyplant on March 8, 2006 - 23:22.
A while ago I ran a workshop with a group of carers who are caring for their spouse/significant other. The participants were mostly in their 60s or older, with a handful of carers in their 40s.
At some point, there was a airing of grievances about benefits and allowances. A number of the older participants vigorously shared their views that some benefits are mis-directed or too generous. It was the familiar inter-generational conflict about whether poverty is absolute or relative. There was a vilification of any claim of poverty from people who had a television, DVD player, mobile phone, carpets,[name a common consumer item] etc.
I'd missed a little bit of the conversation, so I was startled when some of the participants began to sing, I'm Henry the Eighth I am. The conversation had gone beyond "People today, don't know they're born" to an agreement that there was an argument for saying that Henry VIII did not have access to the entertainment options and food choices that we all enjoy today.
I mentioned the Henry VIII reference to a friend who promptly said, "Terry Pratchett wrote something like that". He sent me this quotation in an email - although, sadly, without the source.
You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.
As ever, I fall back onto consideration of Ben Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. Friedman argues that economic growth is essential to moral, social, political and cultural progress. Economic growth means that we change the attributes of what we judge to be poverty or a socially acceptable standard of living. Friedman outlines the comparisons that underlie the influence of income on well-being. For the first, we contrast our present and past circumstances: if we are better off financially that we used to be, and we can buy more with that money, then we feel better off. For the second, we use our present circumstances as a yardstick to compare ourselves to our notional peer group: if we are more prosperous then we feel better; if we are worse off, then we feel worse.
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