Last night before bed I had a wicked case of heartburn. For whatever reason, I get heartburn a lot. Thankfully, ranitidine doesn’t just make me feel better. It makes the simply heartburn go away. It cures it. I find this amaing, and I’m very grateful for it. (Regular antacid is simply not enough.) A few times recently, when I’ve been away from home and didn’t have my pills, heartburn has completely destroyed my sleep, leaving me fatigued and aching all the next day. Until recently, the drug required a prescription. But now a bottle of ranitidine can be had at WalMart for $4. There are 65 pills in a bottle, each one–worth about $.16–a small salvation from misery.

Perhaps my heartburn is a symptom of a stressful modern life. Or perhaps I’m approaching my middle years. Either way, the problem is as good as solved. But the hellish nights and dragging days I have not slogged through are not something I notice–not something that ordinarily enters into my estimation of how good I have it. But it is a part of how good I have it. A world of comfortable beds, shoes that fit, basic indoor climate control, and $4 bottles of ranitidine is a world of massively reduced low-grade suffering. We would do even better if we would spare a moment now and then to reflect on the wonder of this, to allow ourselves to feel gratitude for all those things that give us the comfort to be aggravated by distant injustice and overwhelmed by a superabundance of possibilities in life.

The continued discussion about kids and happines brings into focus the questions about the priority of happiness over other values and the reliability of happiness measurement. One of the hazards of blogging is to imagine that your audience has been following you all along, and so knows your positions on central topics so that your thoughts in short blog posts are interpreted in the context of your larger body of thought. Of course, that’s not how it works.

So, for those of you who insist that happiness isn’t the only thing that matters and that there are deep methodological problems in measuring happiness, let me say that I agree with you. Also, if I may so say myself, I believe I have written what is still one of the clearest and most sophisticated statement of these points in the paper on happiness Cato published last spring. So if philosophical and methodological questions surrounding the attempt to measure happiness interests you, let me direct you to pages 5-17 in my paper, starting at the section “The Limits of Happiness Research.’

Some people find my position confusing, since I am so critical of the methodology of happiness research, yet I also strongly support it. I don’t think this should be that confusing. It can be made better as I science, and I want to help. And it can be useful in assessing policy, as long as you don’t make a bunch of easily-avoidable mistakes, and I want to help with that as well. Here’s what I said about this in the paper:

Despite the foregoing criticisms, happiness research as it stands is far from useless. We can make the best use of it if we don’t naively assume that happiness is really the primary subject of measurement and research, as if the elusive nature of happiness has been pinned down at long last. Happiness research does tell us something about how we feel, and it tells us a lot about the conditions under which different kinds of people are inclined to say that they are satisfied or unsatisfied with life. Good feelings are important, and so are culture-laden judgments that life is going well, even if happiness is more and less than that. It would be pretty incredible if the disposition to say that we are happy on a survey didn’t correlate well with certain good feelings and other good things. And the evidence is clear that it does.

I have done my best to expose the weaknesses of the dominant survey methods in order to provide a much-needed counterweight to the often complacent confidence in their reliability and lack of care in the interpretation of their results. When intellectuals and politicians use putatively scientific data for political purposes, it is important to apply careful scrutiny to their methods and to the way their results are interpreted and used. If, however, we are very careful when comparing happiness survey results across different cultures or across long periods of time; or when looking at studies that make no note of individual personality differences, that do not follow the same individuals over time, or that sample an exceptionally diverse population, it is possible to glean solid information about things almost all of us care about that ought to have real weight—if not all the weight—in our public deliberation about our political and economic institutions and policies. In that regard, it is heartening that recent studies deploy more sophisticated research designs, better econometric techniques, better theoretical constructs, larger data sets, and integration with more objective and rigorous biological measurement techniques.

So, about the stuff with kids, I assume the studies tell us something real both about how kids affect the balance of day-to-day feelings and overall judgments of life satisfaction. I in fact think happiness is more than that and that there are values in competitions with happiness. The brute, intense, often overwhelming attachment to one’s own children may be the basis for one of those values. We are getting better and better at individuating the strands of sentiment and judgment that go into the various considerations that we take to count for an against our choices. If you believe that children make life more meaningful, then let’s try to verify that by clarifying what it is psychologically that constitutes meaning and see if we can find ways of measuring it. I understand that many people resist the attempt to measure everything — meaning, religious devotion, love for a child, the sense of authenticity, a feeling of purpose. But these things are part of the intelligible world, and part of us, and I happen to prefer knowledge over ignorance. New knowledge doesn’t always surprise us, but often it does, calling into question the weight and authority of our reasons. History is sufficient to predict with a high level of confidence that we will resist reevaluating the considerations that we take to count in favor of our lives as we live them. Some people think they know in advance that further knowledge, that deeper inquiry into the character of what we take to be good reasons for living the way we do, will leave us disenchanted and feeling diminished. But they don’t actually know that, because they never bothered to do the work necessary to really find that out.

I can’t say what the point of this less than coherent video from Gallup was, other than to mention that Gallup is at the forefront of measuring things in interesting new ways, but I thought some of you might find it interesting anyway:

[Update... Oh, this one is a little better, sort of. They could use a copywriter who doesn't have to guess so much about what the point of all this is.]

You’ll be relieved to see that the guy from Singapore is interested in measuring life satisfaction in order to allow you (the ruling class of a country like, say, Singapore) to “harness the total capacity of your people.” The Australian is interested in “chomping down the policies so we can drive people the right way.” Huh?

Yes, you can be too tight-fisted. From  Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz in the Harvard Business Review:

One of our studies—published in the Journal of Consumer Research—explored the regret felt by college students over their conduct on recent winter breaks and by alumni remembering winter breaks of 40 years ago. Regret about not having spent or traveled more during breaks increased with time, whereas regret about not having worked, studied, or saved money during breaks decreased with time. We saw a similar pattern in a study of how businesspeople perceived past choices between work and pleasure. Over time, those who had indulged felt less and less guilty about their choices, whereas those who had been dutiful experienced a growing sense of having missed out on the pleasures of life.

People who unduly resist self-indulgence suffer from an excessive farsightedness, or hyperopia—the reverse of typical self-control problems. Rather than yielding to temptation, they focus on acquiring necessities and acting responsibly and they see indulgence as wasteful, irresponsible, and even immoral. As a result, these consumers avoid precisely the products and experiences that they most enjoy. Their hyperopia can inhibit consumption in ways that are bad both for their own well-being and for marketers’ bottom lines. We don’t advocate trying to motivate consumers to make ill-considered purchases, of course, but marketers can help customers make appropriately indulgent choices that they’ll appreciate over the long term.

I love the little bit of pro-luxury “libertarian paternalism” in that last sentence. The very existence of hyperopia of course points to the problem in trying to design one-size-fits-all policy designed to save people from excess. Some people drink, gamble, and shop too little. It needs to be easier for them. And some people do too much. It needs to be harder for them. There is no way a planner can design a set of incentives that hits everybody’s sweet spot.

[Thanks to DWAnderson for the pointer in the comments.]

The new World Values Survey is out and these dismal United States comes in 16th in the world in the WVS happiness rankings, just between such Scandinavian hellholes as Sweden and Norway. You’ll see the usual Latin American bonus in the data, with Puerto Rico, Colombia, and El Salvador populating the upper reaches of the rankings. However, the U.S. has now pulled ahead Mexico. Maybe it’s because all the Mexicans who moved to the U.S. Denmark retains its happiness crown.

The real news is that happiness increased in so many places. Univesity of Michigan political scientist Ronald Ingelhart, director of the WVS, explains why. From the University of Michigan press release:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—People in most countries around the world are happier these days, according to newly released data from the World Values Survey based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Data from representative national surveys conducted from 1981 to 2007 show the happiness index rose in an overwhelming majority of nations studied.

“It’s a surprising finding,” said U-M political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who directs the World Values Surveys and is the lead author of an article on the topic to be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. “It’s widely believed that it’s almost impossible to raise an entire country’s happiness level.”

[...]

The new findings from the World Values Surveys not only show that during the past 25 years, happiness has in fact risen substantially in most countries. Fully as important as the fact that happiness rose is the reason why. In recent decades, low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth, dozens of medium-income countries have democratized and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.

Economic growth, democratization and rising social tolerance have all contributed to rising happiness, with democratization and rising tolerance having even more impact than economic growth. All of these changes have contributed to providing people with a wider range of choice in how to live their lives—which is a key factor in happiness.

The people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries, but even controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others.

“The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives,” Inglehart said.

The world is getting better. Wealth and freedom makes it better.

Watch, listen, learn.

Link via Justin Wolfers, who asks a tangential question I would very much like to know the answer to:

(An aside: You will note that I referred to Betsey as my co-author, which she is, but that is only a partial description, as she is also my Wharton colleague, and also my longtime significant other. What is the right word for this? “Colleague plus?” I imagine that finding the right language for this is an increasingly common conundrum. Any suggestions?)

This paper from the May 2008 edition of Kyklos [ungated] just may be the best paper ever written. It investigates the happiness of economics Nobel Prize winners, non-Nobel superstar economists, and prominent happiness researchers by showing their website photographs to people on the street in Melbourne Brisbane, Australia. Thus it contains winning lines such as:

[T]he advice for young academics is: if you seek happiness, become a macro-economist and research happiness; a Nobel Prize does not make you happier; if you want to be popular with the ladies, take lessons from Edmund Phelps, Bruno Frey and Richard Easterlin; if you are looking for the ability to age like a red wine, Joseph Stiglitz and Jean Tirole have the trick, but not Richard Easterlin.

Who, according to the good people of Melbourne Brisbane, is the happiest economist? Well, who do you think? [Click for full size.]

That’s right, Edmund Phelps. That man is clearly loving life.

Congratulations to the authors for this exemplary piece of social science!

From WSJ’s Wealth Report:

PNC Wealth Management recently polled about 1,500 Americans with $500,000 or more in investible assets and found that 69% of respondents made most of their fortune through work, business ownership or investments. Only 6% made their wealth by inheriting it, while 25% made it through a combination of inheritence and earnings.

What’s most interesting is that the survey found some major differences in the two groups’ attitudes about money — and their responses didn’t always break down along predictable lines:

[...]

LUCK — Fully 37% of earners agreed that “the money I have made so far has come from being at the right place at the right time.” Among heirs, the number was 25%. I guess the heirs don’t subscribe to Warren Buffett’s “lucky sperm” theory.

HAPPINESS– Fuly 76% of earners agree that “my financial success lets me feel less stress and worry,” compared to 50% of heirs. Half of all earners agree that “as I have accumulated more money in my life I have become happier,” compared to a third of heirs.

I especially like the luck result. It’s hard work getting born to the right parents.

[HT: Free Exchange]

Alex Singleton makes a nice point:

We moan about modern Britain in a way that does not seem to scientifically correlate to how good – or bad – it is, empirically. Indeed, complaining is something of a national pastime and, ironically, something that people seem to enjoy.

Far from being a major problem, there is something virtuous about being unhappy with our present circumstances. Ludwig von Mises, one of the 20th century’s leading free-market economists, said (pdf) that to be happy with one’s existing condition: “and to abstain apathetically from any attempts to improve one’s own material conditions, is not a virtue. Such an attitude is rather animal behaviour than conduct of reasonable human beings.”

It is not the level of wealth that makes us happy. Instead, it is the process of betterment – the pursuit of it – that makes us happy. Whether we are twice as rich today as in 1971 has little bearing on our happiness, because it is in the past. Whether people can see their lives improving in the future is what counts. That is why economic growth remains a key component in happiness, despite what the happiness researchers might tell us.

There really is something wonderful about a place that keeps getting better. Those are the places most likely to already have it good, as a consequence of a history of improvement. But people are not driven to make things better for themselves because they are fully satisfied, but because they aren’t. Of course, happiness researchers do tell us that the level of wealth, and the growth that caused it, matters to happiness. Shall we then conclude that dissatisfaction, when harnessed to the institutions of wealth creation, is the source of its own reduction? Yes.