It looks like everybody was happier 20 years ago. Must be all the social media and Donald Trump. Yup that explains everything.
And the Israelis are happier than the Americans. I guess Canada needs to fire some rockets over our border.
Happy holidays
Chart R
There have been plenty of attempts to define the often ineffable quality of happiness: a state of emotional well-being; the sensation of joy; or that moment just before you need more happiness, according to Don Draper. We love some good, clean data, but happiness means many different things to many different people. And, just as feelings of happiness vary from person to person, the disparity in contentment can be seen at a broader level too.
Multigeneration elation
According to a regular survey from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), for example, self-reported “happiness levels” across age groups rarely align. At the last count, Americans between 50 and 64 were the least likely group to say they were “very happy”. Conversely, 31% of adults aged 35-49 said they were feeling “very happy” last year, with the youngest and oldest cohorts falling somewhere in-between.
U are gonna be okay
Of course, any survey of something as hard to define as happiness is going to be volatile in any given year. The good news is that a fairly substantial body of research finds that people often, although of course not always, tend to get happier as they grow older. Indeed, hundreds of studies across multiple countries find evidence of a “U-shaped” curve of happiness that sags in middle age, but increases again as we grow older.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, when the NORC ran the survey in 2021 the share of US adults reporting that they felt “very happy” fell to its lowest level since 1972, as Covid blues got people down. Interestingly, however, other studies found no such trend at a global level, with other measures of well-being reportedly holding up during the pandemic according to the World Happiness Report.
Road to rapture
Some pathways to happiness are instantaneous (like, say, eating a slice of pie)... while others can take longer, like achieving enlightenment (or, say, eating several slices of pie). Indeed, humans are so multifaceted that a full exploration of “what makes us happy” is far beyond the scope of this newsletter — but, there is one pretty powerful driver that most agree on: money.
Mo money, less problems?
A recent survey from Empower found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans — including 72% of millennials and 67% of Gen Z respondents — believe that money actually can buy happiness. Another study of US adults from this year found that, despite previous research indicating that emotional well-being didn’t progress much beyond an annual income of $75k, “happiness” did in fact increase with income far beyond a $200k salary.
The same poll found that the average amount of wealth that American adults reported would bring them happiness was around $1.2 million — about 6x greater than the median net worth of a US household in 2022 (~$190K), with every generation also agreeing that they’d need to make significantly more than the $74k US median annual salary to be fully content.
A global view
The World Happiness Report 2023, published annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, uses Gallup data to evaluate the happiness of countries based on a number of variables — including social support, life expectancy, freedom, and corruption — to give an overall global ranking indexed to 10. While the report is interesting in and of itself — if only for the practically unrivaled dominance of the Nordic nations — it gives a major insight into the relationship between money and happiness at the country level.
At a country-level, a simple analysis reveals a diminishing relationship between money and happiness. In poorer countries, adding a few thousand dollars to GDP per capita has a profound effect on the well-being of its citizens, but once you get into the richer countries, the relationship is much flatter. Indeed, while places like Luxembourg and Singapore scored highly on GDP per capita, each averaging $116k and $106k respectively — some ~$40k more than the US figure — this didn't necessarily equate to a significantly greater degree of happiness.
Although it’s hard not to think of what that pay rise would do for your life, it is perhaps comforting to know that your parents, and several psychologists, were probably right: money may only make you happy up to a certain point.
Happy ending
Even though an extra comma in your bank account might put a smile on your face, what remains constantly valuable in life are its fundamentals. The Ipsos Global Happiness Survey found that, from 2011 to 2021, the most important factors for happiness were consistently: physical health and well-being, living conditions, and, of course, friends and family — something worth remembering over the holidays… no matter how badly that game of Monopoly goes.
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