The Economics of Happiness

http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/winter07/happiness.html

I love the new movement by researchers to answer the age-old question, “Does money really buy happiness?” The answer we’re all dying to hear is “no.” But would that actually free us from the pressure of trying to continually improve our standard of living? Would it take away our worries of securing a solid financial future for our children and ourselves? I doubt it.

The article linked above mostly provides the background and beginnings of Richard Easterlin, an economist heralded as the founder of “happiness economics.” It’s an interesting exercise to review the Easterlin Paradox and think about how it applies to your own life.

“Once a society’s basic needs – food, shelter, employment – are satisfied, the accumulation of greater and greater wealth does not generate greater collective or personal happiness over the long run, aside from the temporary uptick over new possessions, like a nice car.”

So now the research has been done to at least partially dispel the myth of the American dream, which is most commonly presented to us in a way that suggests the pursuit of happiness has an end point - lots of money. Once you get there, you live happily ever after.

All of the results mentioned in this article are not surprising, however, I feel these reports are flawed from the foundation. The surveys conducted to reveal the happiness quotient asks participants to rate themselves as “very happy”, “pretty happy,” and “not too happy.” I don’t understand what those terms mean. It reminds me of the scale of pain used by paramedics with the emoticons: Does your face look like this :) ? Then you are “pretty happy”. This :( ? Then you are “Not too happy”. It is crap.

The first time I was asked to rate myself on that type of scale was during my first miscarriage. I was in the back of an ambulance that had just picked me up from the gate of the Dallas/Ft Worth airport after a 3 hour flight where I struggled to maintain consciousness amidst continuous, crippling contractions, losing what appeared to be gallons of blood, after having fought an epic battle with the flight crew to even let me on the plane in the first place so I could get from the small tourist village in Mexico to somewhere in America in order to find out if I was losing my baby, all the while blaming and hating myself for having perhaps eaten a salad or an ice cube which may or may not have caused this entire devastating event. When the paramedic held up the chart to me and said, "Where would you rate your pain on this scale from 1 to 10?" I told him my pain was a 12.

Where you are on the scale – happiness or pain - all depends on the context of that moment.

I imagine these surveys were conceived by even-tempered men without fluctuating levels of estrogen sneaking up on them at any given moment because my happiness is generally too dynamic to measure. If you asked me 2 days ago, I would have rated myself "not too happy." PMS prevailing, I was sinking into the worry pit of my husband's job uncertainty and my 18 year-old getting a D+ her first semester into college. However, ask me today - Pilates prevailing, job prospects looking up, both young children back in school full time - I would rate myself as "Very Happy Indeed."

Research reliability notwithstanding, this article does provide the key to happiness right in paragraph 5:

“Another researcher found that two factors with a measurable and permanent effect on individual happiness are PLASTIC SURGERY (a positive effect) and NOISE (a negative effect).”

I read into this that turning off the kids’ TV and lifting my eyelids is the key to an increase in permanent happiness. Hooray! Finally someone has given me scientific justification for telling my kids to shut up and spending my savings on a mini-face lift and tummy tuck!