"It was Richard Easterlin who first prominently called the happiness literature to the attention of economists in his 1974 article entitled ‘‘Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?’’ On the strength of evidence that rising incomes over time are not accompanied by rising levels of measured happiness, Easterlin’s tentative answer to the question posed in his title was no. In their own survey of the relevant evidence, Frey and Stutzer also appear to embrace this conclusion. My own reading of the evidence, however, is that despite the apparent failure of economic growth to stimulate increases in measured happiness, we should be reluctant to conclude that growth has little value. There is indeed independent evidence that having higher productivity would promote well-being, provided its fruits were spent in certain ways. As Frey and Stutzer note, for example, people are happier when they have more leisure and when they enjoy better health. In the past century, productivity growth has in fact led to substantial increases in both health and leisure. That these gains have not been reflected in higher measured happiness levels does not make them a matter of indifference. Why haven’t such obvious improvements shown up in higher measured levels of happiness? One possibility is that although happiness measures do a reasonably good job of tracking our experiences as we are consciously aware of them, they may simply fail to capture all important dimensions of the quality of life. For example, consider the following though experiment in which we imagine two parallel universes, one just like the one we live in now and another in which everyone’s income is twice what it is now. Suppose that in both cases you would be the median earner, with an annual income of $50,000 in one case and $100,000 in the other. Suppose further that you will feel equally happy in the two universes (as suggested by the evidence that Frey and Stutzer discuss). And suppose, finally, that you know that people in the richer universe would spend more to protect the environment from toxic waste, and that this would result in healthier and longer, even if not happier, lives for all. Can there be any question that it would be better to live in the second universe?"
quarta-feira, 18 de julho de 2007
A Ciencia da Felicidade 5
"It was Richard Easterlin who first prominently called the happiness literature to the attention of economists in his 1974 article entitled ‘‘Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?’’ On the strength of evidence that rising incomes over time are not accompanied by rising levels of measured happiness, Easterlin’s tentative answer to the question posed in his title was no. In their own survey of the relevant evidence, Frey and Stutzer also appear to embrace this conclusion. My own reading of the evidence, however, is that despite the apparent failure of economic growth to stimulate increases in measured happiness, we should be reluctant to conclude that growth has little value. There is indeed independent evidence that having higher productivity would promote well-being, provided its fruits were spent in certain ways. As Frey and Stutzer note, for example, people are happier when they have more leisure and when they enjoy better health. In the past century, productivity growth has in fact led to substantial increases in both health and leisure. That these gains have not been reflected in higher measured happiness levels does not make them a matter of indifference. Why haven’t such obvious improvements shown up in higher measured levels of happiness? One possibility is that although happiness measures do a reasonably good job of tracking our experiences as we are consciously aware of them, they may simply fail to capture all important dimensions of the quality of life. For example, consider the following though experiment in which we imagine two parallel universes, one just like the one we live in now and another in which everyone’s income is twice what it is now. Suppose that in both cases you would be the median earner, with an annual income of $50,000 in one case and $100,000 in the other. Suppose further that you will feel equally happy in the two universes (as suggested by the evidence that Frey and Stutzer discuss). And suppose, finally, that you know that people in the richer universe would spend more to protect the environment from toxic waste, and that this would result in healthier and longer, even if not happier, lives for all. Can there be any question that it would be better to live in the second universe?"
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