The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Could an economic depression make us less depressed?

    By Deadman on Wed, 03/04/2009 - 5:55pm | Politics, Business, Personal

    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
    Little we see in Nature that is ours;
    We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

    I don't know many very happy people. I know people who are content enough, I suppose. I know plenty of people who do a decent job at hiding their discontent. (As for myself, I'm probably somewhere in between those two categories, leaning toward the former).

    But in terms of truly happy people I see in my life, I'd put the figure at no more than probably 30 percent.

    That's not a shocking fact, really, considering that the government estimates that in any given year, 26.2% of adult Americans have some kind of mood disorder - nearly 60 million people.

    It's tough to know how that rather large number compares to previous eras, as statistics on depression rates over time are hard to find, mainly because the disease itself has only been recognized as such for the past 50 years or so. The actual clinical term Major depressive disorder - what we normally consider depression - was coined in the 1970s.

    Not only was diagnosis of depression rare until fairly recently, but people were also likely less willing to admit having the illness or get help for feeling low due to the attached social stigma.

    But even accounting for these factors, it's my assumption that more people in this country than ever before are suffering from depression, or at least from a general malaise and discontentedness.

    At least part of this phenomenon, if it is indeed true, can actually be attributed to this nation's economic success as I believe increased wealth beyond a certain point can make people less happy.

    In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin wrote a paper which showed that even though wealthier people within any given society tend to be happier, nations with higher GDPs weren't on average 'happier' than their poorer counterparts (once a certain baseline level of wealth had been reached). The phenomenon became known as the Easterlin paradox.

    The theory has come under some attack of late as more recent studies have pointed to data that does show happiness increases as a nation's wealth increases (see chart below).

    But DF knows how i feel about stats, especially when they're based on rather subjective, completely self-reported datapoints.

    Personally, I still think the Easterlin paradox makes sense. Wealth can be a real drag for a variety of reasons:

    1) Wealth increases our options past the point of optimality. And having too many options makes it more likely we hesitate before making a decision, waver when making a decision, and regret after making a decision. We wonder if we've made the right choice, and if we've taken full advantage of the opportunities given us.

    2) Wealth gives us too much time for self-reflection. When people are forced to spend most of their waking hours finding food for their family or making a basic living, they don't usually concern themselves with larger existential questions  - why are we here? what does it all mean? why do people often suck so bad? - that can bring down the mood of any intelligent, thinking person.

    3) Wealth makes us want more wealth. It's the old 'Keeping up with the Joneses' phenomenon. Wealth is, after all, relative, and we often get discouraged when we see our friends and colleagues doing better than us. Why are we 'failing'? I think it's particularly likely that this country's increasing income inequality has increased the importance of this particular phenomenon as more and more people feel like they're falling behind.

    So it makes me wonder, could we as a poorer nation feel more blessed for the things we do have, and understand that all of the striving and climbing and hustling isn't worth it if we can't enjoy our lives?

    Would a prolonged downturn help us prioritize our strained resources, and refocus on goals and issues that matter more than the almighty dollar (on a subtle level, I feel that's what Obama's ambitious budget plan is trying to force us to do)?

    Could it maybe bring us closer together as a nation?

    Could a depression actually help us be happier?

     

    Topics: 
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    Comments

    But what is happiness?


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 9:56am

    ah, the $64,000 question. I think it's like love - you can't define it but you sure as hell know when you feel it.


    by Deadman on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:08pm

    Do you? I have sometimes looked back and realized that I was happier or unhappier than I knew at the time. I've also looked back and realized that I was more in love or less in love than I knew at the time. And happiness is also like love in that there's a divergence between anticipation and reality.

    The main problem with all these absurd happiness statistics is that no one can agree on what happiness is. Is it a state, a feeling, relative, or absolute? How does one measure it?

    You seem to suggest that you have some internal connection to your degree of happiness, the same way you know when you're hungry or have to crap. But that means that you have no connection to anyone else's degree of happiness, so you can't really compare yourself. Maybe you've lived you're whole life thinking that you were generally happy but your most happy moment corresponds to the feeling normal people have in moment's of despair. (And maybe you don't know what it's like to really, really have to crap.)

    So maybe we can try to obtain objectivity by measuring endorphins or neural activity in certain regions of the brain. But what if you're brainscan shows that you're as a happy as a baby on crack, yet you feel like crying all the time. Are you or are you not happy? And speaking of crack, if you could live with a permanent crack high for the rest of your life, would you be happy?

    So maybe it doesn't matter what we actually feel but only what we think we feel. If Danes are more likely to call themselves "happy," then we say that they're happier, regardless of what's going on in their neural anatomies. But maybe Danes are just condititioned to think that they're happy. Or maybe lykkelig does not translate exactly to happy. Or maybe people think that they're unhappy, but that's just because they don't know what it's like to be really unhappy.

    So perhaps we can agree on some external measure--like a safety and freedom. Wealth? Fame? But of course, we all have different ideas about external measures, which brings us back to square one.

    Conclusion: Don't worry. Be happy.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:56pm

    Speaking of not knowing whether you're in love:


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:58pm

    my brain is exploding.im going to try a paragraph-by-paragraph reply cuz there are some interesting thoughts in there.

    1-2) i agree, certainly one's views on how happy they were (or how in love they were) can change when looking at past moments in hindsight because i believe both concepts are relative. also like love, there isn't a simple 'yes-no' answer when it comes to happiness. there are degrees, and gradations, and even moments in timewhere you may feel more or less happy or more and less in love.

    There certainly is no good measuring stick for judging someone else's happiness. I know psychologists have a lot of ways to try and diagnose depression, but they're far from precise.

    3) That's true - as I've said, happiness is relative. my definition or baseline level may be way different than yours, but i'm going to somewhat agree with DF here in that i don't think happiness' relativity totally invalidates it as a concept that can be self-reported and have some value as a guide in determining how satsified a nation's citizens are. certainly, trends moving higher or lower should have real value (ie it still means something if the danes satisfaction level falls to 9.7 from 9.9, even if the saddest danes are still happier than the happiest rwandans).

    4) again, is happiness an emotion or just a complex chemical reaction. same with love. my guess is if its the latter and you feel like crying, you'll see that and be able to measure it on your brainscan.

    the latter question gets to the philosophical idea of do we need to feel sadness to feel happiness... do we need to feel pain to feel joy ... i say yes, because you need a baseline upon which to judge variations, and you can only feel the extreme of any emotion if you know what the other extreme feels like.

    5-6) the idea i assume with the satisfaction surveys is that when you aggregate data from a wide spectrum of people, you are somehow incorporating ALL the different ways people perceive they get satisfaction. Individually, what makes me happy may be far different than what makes my neighbor happy, but with enough datapoints, you can probably make a conclusion that a society with high self-reported satisfaction levels offers its citizens a bunch of goodies - wealth, leisure time, good food, freedoms, etc. etc. (damn, there i go agreeing with DF again).

    7) bobby mcferrin had it wrong. lower your expectations, fear the worst, and then you'll be happy.


    by Deadman on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 3:27pm

    But what are you measuring? My point is that there are many ways to define happiness--a feeling, a neurological state, a behavioral response, or an external condition. And it can be absolute or relative. All the definitions have flaws b/c in my opinion, the concept of happiness is inherently vague and ambiguous.

    But anyone who tries to measure happiness must choose from among these candidates, and which one they choose will dramatically change the results. Thus, the studies disputing the Easterlin paradox are not necessarily better studies; they're just using a different definition of happiness.

    So an economic depression may make you happier in some ways, by constraining your freedom of choice as you suggest, and unhappier in some ways, by stressing you out and undermining your finanical security. Any attempt to come up with some comparable happiness quotient that somehow weighs all of these factors reliably is a fool's quest.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 4:13pm

    I really like how self-reported, subjective phenomena are too hairy for meaningful data, but they're just fine for a priori conjecture. ;)

    Leave it to G to get all Socratic on us, but happiness is elusive.  FWIW, as long as we're indulging in such conjecture, I think happiness probably has a lot to do with perspective, which appears to me to be at least somewhat maleable, and concepts that are more difficult to get a handle on, like personality.  I'm sure we've all known someone that was just "up" despite what was going on in their lives.  OTOH, there's always Debbie Downer.

    What this chart shows doesn't really surprise me.  The failed states are all near the bottom, the wealthy democracies are near the top.  It's no wonder to me that people who live in countries without functioning governments and economies report being less happy.

    I know you think that the recession is good medecine, but a depression making us happier?  I don't think so.  There are already plenty of people here in the U.S. who haven't really seen any real increase in their quality of life in recent years.  A prolonged recession or depression isn't going to help that scenario.  I'm pretty satisfied with the correlation shown here generally.  How each individual relates to their unique circumstances surely has much to do with their own idiosyncracies, but thanks to the law of large numbers we can see a pattern in that wretched data.


    by DF on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:22pm

    You're right about perspective being maleable. A few months ago, I hated my job so much it was an extraordinary effort every day just to get to the office. Today, I have a job and it doesn't seem all that bad anymore.


    by Orlando on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:44pm

    my key point is that once a society is wealthy enough to offer its citizens the ability to afford basic necessities of life and maybe a few nice luxuries like running water and IPods, there is a limit to the additional happiness that additional wealth provides and at some level, the relationship begins to reverse.

    I may want some of the options that wealth provides, but i dont want to be overwhelmed with options. I may feel confused or regretful.

    I may want some of the free time that wealth provides, but if i have too much, i may feel unproductive or unfulfilled.

    And I certainly think that a society whose increased wealth confers to the few versus the many - in the form of increased income inequality - is unlikely to see satsifaction levels rise. (which is what i think has happened here in the States during the past decade)

    i'm not sure a depression would make us happier as a nation. But it could level the playing field a bit. And it would certainly force us to consider other things that make us happy aside from wealth. Families, friends, leisure, culture, a fulfilling career, etc.

    i certainly think the affects of a prolonged downturn would be a bit mixed.

    Just take a look at how a city like New York could change in such a scenario - certainly crime would likely increase, so people who value security would find it less pleasant of a place, and some nice stores and restaurants would go out of business so people who value fine goods may not like the city as much, but it would also become more affordable again, allowing more artists to return to the city and entertainment prices would come down, so people who value culture may like the city more, it would also probably make it easier for more diverse people to live here so people who value diversity would probably appreciate that. maybe other industries aside from advertising and finance would begin to flourish, making the city overall a more vibrant, exciting place.

    however, just as I think there is a limit to increased satisfaction with increased wealth on the upside, i think the same is true on the downside. obviously, if nyc became a rat-infested, crime-ridden trash dump where it wasn't safe to walk around at night again, then i think it's quite clear that satisfaction levels would decrease dramatically.


    by Deadman on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 3:42pm

    Studies have show that dagblog makes people happy.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:57pm

    Do depressed people have moments of happiness?


    by Bluesplashy on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 9:29pm

    there are all types of mood disorders and degrees of depression, but i think that people who suffer from major depressive disorder probably experience very few moments of joy. i probably am more referring to a general malaise than depression in this post but the word just fit nicely because it has double meaning!


    by Deadman on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 10:31am

    Yeah, I was just thinking how many moments of happpiness can a depressed person have before they are not depressed. But that is still slightly off topic.  Now - your post about connecting wealth and happiness to GDP.  I think the happiness of the people and the wealth of county may be something like the 'savings paradox' - what is good for the individual's economy is not necessarialy good for the national economy.  There are many things that go into what makes people think they are happy.  Here in this country we are bombarded with advertizements about products and chemicals that will make us happy.  We need money to buy these products, if I don't have the money to buy them, I can't be happy.  There is also finding out that what we thought was enough was not nearly enough.  I think the percentage of people that were happy before will be the same percentage after this is over.  How much happiness was there after the Great Depression?    


    by Bluesplashy on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 5:32pm

    Let's turn this question around a bit. GDP. We track it as THE magical indicator of how well our societies are doing. We spend billions (sorry, trillions) working to increase it. Why? The economic texts ultimately have to tie consumption (and the value of having all those choices) with human "satisfaction." But GDP is a shite measurement system. Even Kuznets thought we were nuts for pumping it up to such great heights - "the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income." It has its virtues, and I take it for what it is, but it does NOT have any clear connection to satisfaction, other than an extremely weak theory.

    As for it being a poor measurement, just on its OWN terms, it doesn't get at non-market activities very well, or quality, or capture externalities, or income distribution or the production of bads or positional goods and on and on.... And for decades they've proposed alternatives, and though I'm not in love with any of them as the be all and end all, you woulda thunk we'd at least offer up periodic comment on how these other metrics moved. But we don't. It's all GDP.

    So why are we shooting at the line on the chart which tracks the "happiness" measurement, when the OTHER one functions as a proxy for the same set of human feelings/conditions? 


    by quinn esq on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 1:13pm

    Yes.  Yes.  I am very much in love with your comment.


    by DF on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 1:33pm

    for some reason, i'm confused by your last statement. what does 'shooting at the line on the chart' mean?

    as far as the rest of your comment, i totally agree. and that's kind of what I was getting at with the column. That we've seen GDP grow for much of this decade yet i don't know how much more satisified we became as a nation. maybe it's because most of the gains went to an increasingly narrow segment of society, maybe it's because the gains seemed as illusory and intangible as they turned out to be, or maybe it's because at some point, more wealth makes us less happy.

    And that just maybe an economic downturn could get people to focus on other things that make them happy other than the relentless pursuit of wealth.


    by Deadman on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 3:38pm

    Sorry D-man. Wasn't meant for you.

    It's just that I swam for 10 years in this pond, and mainstream economics (and business) used to trot out a stream of (pathetically self-serving) arguments against alternative measures and debates around "happiness." THAT, for me, is the major voice I still hear on these debates - not the voices of those who favour more "happiness" or alternative measures. They're the ones "shooting at the line on the chart." I mean, 80% of the population "gets" that there's a problem here, the theoretical case is garbage, and yet... which measure is still on the front page? Theirs. And there's no objective or theoretical basis which would say theirs SHOULD be.


    by quinn esq on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 4:00pm