May 12, 2008
Letter from new york
In politics, happiness can be life of the party
The Tribune's Lisa Anderson writes that, sad to say, a key link between happy people and their political ideologies is often ignored
NEW YORK — At this point, in what may feel like the most interminable presidential race in the history of the planet, you might think every conceivable aspect of politics has been discussed, reported, analyzed and chewed over ad nauseam. But you would be wrong.
Consider the politics of happiness. Hardly anyone talks about it, even though the Declaration of Independence lists the pursuit of happiness right up there with life and liberty as Americans' "unalienable Rights." The only other country in the world known to specify happiness as a goal for its citizens is the kingdom of Bhutan, but that's another story.
In the torrent of words flooding the campaign trail, happiness rates barely a mention. That is too bad because "when it comes to happiness, the bottom line is that politics matter," according to Arthur Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University and author of the just-published "Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It."
Politicians overlook happiness "because they measure what's easy to measure," Brooks said. "They talk about money because money is easier to measure than human thriving. But when people in the exit polls come out they talk about cultural values as why they voted for a particular politician."
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Brooks defines the politics of happiness as "the political patterns that separate happy people from unhappy people."
This deserves politicians' attention, he writes, because "happy people treat others better than unhappy people do. They are more charitable than unhappy people, have better marriages, are better parents, act with greater integrity, and are better citizens. Happy people not only work harder than unhappy people, but volunteer more too—meaning that they increase our nation's prosperity and strengthen our communities. In short, happy citizens are better citizens. Better citizens are vital to making our nation healthy and strong."
One reason the issue of happiness may be addressed so rarely is that candidates, like almost everyone else, probably assume they know what makes Americans happy. "The political campaigns are all about unsubstantiated theories about how the world works," said Brooks. And, he said, they likely would be just as wrong as he was before he did the massive number-crunching that underpins the findings in his book.
Those findings, all based on data from large, non-partisan surveys, are often surprising, counterintuitive and bound to make some people furious.
"I thought liberals were happiest. ... I thought kids make you happy. I thought fundamentalist Christianity makes you unhappy. I thought leisure makes you happier than work. I thought all kinds of freedom make you happy. I thought I actually was going to find in many cases that money really does buy happiness," said Brooks, who discovered he was wrong on all counts.
For starters, there is a yawning happiness gap between political liberals and conservatives. A 2004 survey found that conservatives were more than twice as likely to say they were very happy than were liberals. Moreover, said Brooks, this gap has endured for at least 35 years, no matter who was in the White House. Brooks traces the cause of this to two key factors on which liberals and conservatives diverge: religion and marriage. Data conclusively indicates that religious people are happier and better off emotionally than the non-religious, he found. Political conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals; in 2004 they were found to be more than twice as likely as liberals to attend church at least once a week.
Married people of all political groups are nearly twice as likely as singles to say they are very happy. And two-thirds of conservatives are married compared with one-third of liberals.
Notably, children may be a blessing at the end of the day, but marital happiness "takes a nose dive" after the birth of the first child. It really doesn't bounce back until the kids move out if, that is, the marriage has survived, Brooks said.
As for work versus leisure, in 2002, 69 percent of Americans said they would continue working even if they didn't need to. Brooks said he was surprised to find that religious, economic and political freedom increases happiness but that "people who embrace freedom with sexuality and drug use are unhappier people." And, he said, money makes people happiest when they give it away to charity.
Happiness is integral to politics, he said. "We're happiness-seeking machines and that doesn't stop when we pull the lever in a voting booth."
Lisa Anderson is the Tribune's New York bureau chief.
lbanderson@tribune.com
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
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