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90 comments on Is More Better?

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Stuart Staniford on March 6, 2006 - 2:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It does seem to me that TI's point is a very good one. That whole lower left leg of your figure is made of ex-communist countries who probably weren't too happy to begin with as they lived in communist dictatorships, and then had their happiness further enhanced by the collapse of their system.

I also note a few interesting relationships like Ireland > UK > Germany, and the whole thing makes me think it would be very interesting to look at the relationship of happiness to growth rate (in either GDP/capita or energy/capita). Given that humans have a strong tendency to get used to conditions as they are, changes in level could be more important to happiness than the actual level.

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Leanan on March 6, 2006 - 3:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Given that humans have a strong tendency to get used to conditions as they are, changes in level could be more important to happiness than the actual level.

Good point.  There was a recent study done that found the wealthier you are, the less happy are.  (Assuming basic needs are met.)  The reason, the researchers claimed, was that the more you have, the less there is that can make you happy.  For example, I would be ecstatic if I won $50,000 in the lottery.  Bill Gates would barely notice.  

OTOH, they've also found that in the long term, we all have a "happiness setpoint" we tend to return to.  They studied people who had something wonderful happen to them, and people who had suffered something terrible.  For example, people who won the lottery, and people who got permanently paralyzed in an accident.  Good luck did make people happy for awhile, and bad luck made them depressed, but after about three years, they were back to normal.  The naturally happy were happy, the naturally crabby were not.

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Nate Hagens on March 6, 2006 - 4:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Stuart, this analysis used the mutually intersecting countries of the worldvalues site and the britishpetroleum data - there were far more countries in each but I only used ones that had data for both. With more time I could have found energy per capita for the entire worldvalues 1999/2000 wave.

Eventually Ill get to it

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