… and the Pursuit of Happiness - Institute of Economic Affairs

are more equal countries happier?
4 Are more equal countries happier?
Christopher Snowdon
Happiness is flatlining
A graph which shows nothing happening for fifty years is not the
most auspicious starting point for a radical theory. In spite of
wars, recessions, oil crises, inflation and the fluctuating fortunes
of the nation’s football teams, self-reported happiness in Britain
has resolutely refused to budge. When the crime rate rocketed, it
remained as flat as a bowling green; when the crime rate fell, it
displayed not a flicker of satisfaction. Religions withered, diseases
were cured, politicians came and went, interest rates rose and
fell, but nothing would sway the population’s happiness from its
horizontal march. Whether people are questioned about happiness,
life satisfaction or social wellbeing, 1 there has been very little
change in the nation’s mood since the 1960s – which is to say,
since the questionnaires were first drawn up on a regular basis.
National happiness surveys offer little hope to anyone wishing
to demonstrate that anything has made people more cheerful
in the last half-century. For those wishing to prove that something
has not made us happier, on the other hand, the relentless
straight line can embellish almost any narrative. It could, for
example, be used to demonstrate the futility of pursuing health as
a political objective given that the ten-year increase in life expectancy
enjoyed by the average Briton since 1965 has apparently not
led to greater happiness. Equally, it could be argued that neither
women’s liberation nor the expansion of the welfare state has
improved the human lot.
Such arguments are almost never put forward. Instead, it is
always the assertion that economic growth has failed to boost
wellbeing which has dominated debate. This debate began when
Richard Easterlin first noticed the paradox of rising GDP and
flatlining happiness in the USA in 1974. The Easterlin paradox has
since been challenged by researchers who say that happiness has
been rising after all (Veenhoven and Hagerty, 2003; Stevenson
and Wolfers, 2008; Deaton, 2008). That controversy is not the
subject of this chapter. We shall content ourselves with the simple
fact that the large rise in GDP in the last 50 years has not been
matched by a proportionate rise in subjective wellbeing.
For critics of the free market, this is a vindication of their belief
that capitalism has come to the end of its road. Although Easterlin
never claimed that people would be happier in a ‘steady-state’ (i.e.
zero-growth) economy than in a flourishing free market, others
have made this claim for him. These ‘growth sceptics’ (Ben-Ami,
2010) might grudgingly admit that two centuries of increasing
prosperity have improved living standards to an unprecedented
degree. They might even be coaxed into conceding that life has
been better in the capitalist West than in the workers’ paradises
of the USSR. But, they insist, flatlining happiness shows that the
benefits of growth have finally been wrung dry and that a different
economic system is required if the people are to reach euphoria.
1 Although there are some differences between these three measures, the results
remain much the same and I will use the terms interchangeably.
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