annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
The authors found that three-quarters of the variation among countries can be explained by six economic and social factors: gross domestic product per capita (a basic measure of national wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (having someone to rely on during times of trouble); trust (a perceived absence of corruption in government and business); the perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (measured by donations).
Still, there are outliers.
In Latin America, life evaluations are about 0.6 points higher on average than would otherwise be predicted by those indicators. East Asian countries have the opposite problem, reporting less happiness than would be expected based on those factors. In both cases, the authors credit, at least in part, cultural differences.
Still, they argue that those six factors explain much of the variation in happiness around the world — and that nations ignore the social factors at their own peril.
Take the United States, which ranked 14th this year. Despite gains in per capita income and healthy years of life expectancy, happiness in the United States declined 0.51 points between the two-year periods ending in 2007 and 2016, they found.
“We’re getting richer, but our social capital is deteriorating,” Dr. Sachs said.
Social support, trust, perceived freedom and generosity all suppress happiness in America. And to offset that drag economically, gross domestic product per capita would have to rise from about $53,000 to $133,000, he argues.
“The country is mired in a roiling social crisis that is getting worse,” he wrote in a chapter dedicated to America’s flagging happiness. “Yet the dominant political discourse is all about raising the rate of economic growth.”
To fix that social fraying, Dr. Sachs argues policy makers should work toward campaign finance reform, reducing income and wealth inequality, improving social relations between native-born and immigrant populations, overcoming the national culture of fear induced by the Sept. 11 attacks, and improving the educational system.
