The Policy Implications of Happiness Research

Over the past several years, a handful of books have attempted to use happiness research as a basis for policy recommendations. Two of those books, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard, and Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It by Arthur C. Brooks, present a broad set of recommendations for society, from liberal and conservative perspectives, respectively.

Both authors make policy and personal recommendations with a similar goal in mind: increasing happiness. They also draw upon largely similar bodies of research, which include a large number of surprisingly consistent surveys on happiness. Although a few of the authors’ recommendations are similar and the two don’t directly contradict each other a lot, even looking at the same studies and with the common goal of increasing happiness they manage to reach largely different conclusions.

Although Brooks writes about how to increase American happiness and Layard writes about increasing happiness internationally, both point out that American happiness has remained steady over the past several decades despite America’s increasing wealth. Humans adapt surprisingly quickly not only to wealth but also major life events (though not things like taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s or unpredictable loud noise). Money only has an intrinsic effect on happiness when people are so poor that they struggle to provide for their basic needs; but neither author thinks it’s as simple as “money doesn’t buy happiness.”

Layard writes that although richer countries are no happier than well-off societies, the richest people in a given country are in fact happier than the poorer people in the country. The idea here is that it’s not just how well you do, but your status relative to others. In talking about this race for status, Layard quotes Gore Vidal who said “It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.”

Gross National Happiness

Brooks considers this idea but says it’s not the best supported hypothesis. Instead, “what the data tell us is that richer people are happier than poorer people because their relative prosperity makes them feel successful.” We take our paychecks as evidence of success, and feelings of success have a strong positive correlation with happiness.

Brooks uses this idea of the importance of success and achievement to argue against most welfare and government support programs. Instead, he thinks policies should be directed at increasing economic mobility. He advocates increasing educational opportunities, and stimulating the American spirit of entrepreneurship. Brooks emphasizes that those who believe there is opportunity to advance through hard work are happier than those who do not.

He further states that although it’s true that America has a gap between the rich and poor that’s larger than many developed countries, the fact that more Americans see room for advancement means we’re happier than many European countries. The obvious response to this is that although Americans who believe in mobility may be happier, in reality the poor are unlikely to advance. Brooks anticipates this response, questioning the research typically used to support it and citing figures from government agencies that “one-fifth of the people in the lowest income quintile will move to a higher quintile within a year, and about half will rise within a decade.”

Brooks’ argument here isn’t as convincing as most of his points, but in any case one thing is clear: regardless of ideology and beliefs, there’s sure to be something in the happiness literature that you find disconcerting. For instance, both authors mention that children actually make their parents unhappy, and Brooks writes about how political extremists are actually quite happy. He’s clever enough to come up with reasons why having children and avoiding political extremism have a positive effect on gross national happiness, but he doesn’t have any similar reasoning regarding his repeated finding that Republicans, the married, and the religious are the happiest people in America.

Brooks states that religious people are happier because they lack the moral freedom and choice of secularists. Brooks isn’t saying secular people are less happy because they make the wrong choices, but rather hypothesizing that an overload of options means it’s difficult to make moral choices and feel confident in them. It’s much easier to live with simple rules than make difficult ethical decisions.

Brooks also says that, even controlling for income, Republicans are more likely to perform all kinds of charitable acts because they feel that charity is the role of citizens instead of the government. If one finds such conclusions unpleasant, the response shouldn’t be to deny them or spend an inordinate amount of time looking for flaws in the research methodology.

If all one cared about is a quick route to increasing personal happiness, being a liberal atheist might not be a very good choice. But we should also work to change that, whether through strengthening atheist communities, or encouraging liberal charity.

And if Christians can derive a simple moral code from a book as filled with contradictions as the Bible, surely atheists can develop some effective ethical heuristics. More seriously though, do we really want to adhere to a simple moral code that makes our decisions black and white? In the real world there are far more shades of gray than heroes and villains, and accepting that we can’t always know the right choice to make may be an instance where we need to sacrifice some happiness in order to make better decisions.

Lessons from a New Science

A lot depends on what our goal as a society is, whether we have a hedonistic imperative to increase happiness, or whether we have some other goal. Layard spends more time on this than Brooks, and reaches the conclusion that goals other than happiness don’t make a lot of sense. Layard exhibits rule utilitarianism in that he recognizes that there are instances where a law that doesn’t always make people happy may be kept on the books because living in a lawful society does make people happy in the long run.

According to Layard, the problem with goals other than happiness is that they can conflict, and that we need a supergoal to determine what to do when goals such as autonomy and health interfere with each other. He says that although we can give explanations as to why we want to be healthy, for instance, happiness is the logical supergoal because “it is self-evidently good.”

In response to fears that he is advocating some kind of Brave New World or a life composed purely of lotus-eating, he says that if people actually enjoyed eating lotuses for a long time that would be a good outcome. But in reality, they wouldn’t be happy just eating lotuses, as evidenced by the way people set challenging goals for themselves.