Progress Daily

Richard Layard argues that higher incomes do not lead to greater happiness, that people are deluded into pursuing higher incomes by distortions in perception:

“First, I compare what I have with what I have become used to (through a process of habituation). As I ratchet up my standards, this reduces the enjoyment I get from any given standard of living. Second, I compare what I have with what other people have (through a process of rivalry). If others get better off, I need more in order to feel as good as before. So, we have two mechanisms which help to explain why all our efforts to become richer are so largely self-defeating in terms of the overall happiness of society.”

Layard’s theories are supported by survey evidence. When asked questions such as “would you rather earn $50,000 in a world where others earn half that or earn $100,000 in a world where others earn double that?,” most people indicate that they would prefer higher relative income to higher absolute income.

Economists believe that people indicate their desires by how they behave (”revealed preference”). Affluent people rarely move into poor neighborhoods in order to enjoy higher relative incomes. Most immigrants move from poor to rich countries knowing that they will become relatively poorer. Their behavior appears to suggest that people value absolute, rather than relative, income. Given a conflict between surveys and behavior, economists tend to view the survey results as unreliable.

Layard defends survey research on happiness, arguing that people have shown an ability to self-report happiness accurately. He reports on results showing that people’s answers to questions about whether they are feeling happy are correlated with increased activity in certain parts of the brain. Therefore, something “real” is going on when people say that they are happy.

However, the fact that people can report their own happiness correctly does not mean that they can correctly articulate what makes them happy.

“Can Money Buy Happiness?” by Arnold Kling

Within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival, the native population of Hispaniola had fallen from around 500,000 to less than 500. Within a century of the Europeans’ arrival, roughly 90% of the population of the Americas perished; most were killed by the pathogens introduced by Europeans.

12.5 million Africans were imported to take their place. Africa had been a source of slave labor since ancient times. Over the centuries it is likely that as many slaves had been marched northward across the Sahara as would be shipped westward across the Atlantic. Well before Columbus’s first American voyage, Madeira had become a wealthy sugar colony employing largely African slave labour.

Northern Europeans had few qualms about following in the footsteps of the Spanish and Portuguese. They became planters, primarily growing sugar, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, rice, hemp and cotton, all of which required heavy labour to produce.

Europeans were susceptible to diseases in Africa, and lacked the military force required to directly capture large numbers of slaves there, so they relied on local suppliers. Historians have been able to arrive at fairly precise figures regarding practically every aspect of the slave trade. On the basis of these findings it is claimed that slaves were capable of performing the tasks assigned to them more efficiently and cheaply than free laborers.

Before 1820, African slaves outnumbered European settlers in the New World by a ratio of more than five to one.

Given that virtually all the major exports of the Americas were slave-produced and destined for sale on the world market, plantation agriculture was necessarily competitive and efficient. Planters were sensitive to market changes, selling, hiring out, or acquiring additional slaves as circumstances required.

Europe’s demand was principally for tropical products, so up to the American War of Independence, the value of exports from the West Indies was ten times that of the colonies north of the Chesapeake Bay. A mere 500,000 slaves, 5–6% of the total, went to North America. 3.5 million went to Brazil. In Brazil, as in other sugar-producing regions, life expectancy and fertility rates were so low that the only way of maintaining a stable workforce was by shipping in more slaves. When Britain withdrew from the slave trade in 1807, the effect on its colonies’ economy and population was catastrophic. In contrast, the withdrawal of the US from the slave trade, in 1808, had no discernible effect on its slave population, which, being principally employed in tobacco and cotton cultivation, had achieved a rate of natural increase not unlike that of the white population.

On the basis of the available evidence it would appear that Britain’s interests would have been best served by expanding the slave trade and broadening the frontiers of its slave empire. Just as the US expanded its slave system westward along the Gulf Coast into Texas, so Britain could have established new slave regimes in Trinidad, British Guiana and other recently acquired territories. Instead of seeking to suppress the slave trade, it could have dominated it, and in the process outproduced Brazil and Cuba, increased its own wealth, and contributed to the economic growth of the Americas.

The rise of a climate of opinion that objected to slavery on moral grounds was something new. There had been nothing like it in ancient or medieval times or in any other society of which we have record. Perhaps, David Brion Davis hypothesizes, moral progress is possible.

“The abolition of slavery,” Howard Temperley’s review of Inhuman Bondage, by David Brion Davis

There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that bad economic performance is not self-correcting. On average, poor countries do not catch up to rich countries. (See e.g. Barro, Robert, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin. 1992. “Convergence.” Pdf file here. Journal of Political Economy 100, pp.223-251 and Barro, Robert. 1991. “Economic Growth in a Cross-Section of Countries.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, pp.407-443.) The main reason seems to be that poor countries consistently have bad policies. (See e.g. Sachs, Jeffrey, and Andrew Warner. 1995b. “Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration.” Pdf file here. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1, pp.1-95.)

The least pleasant places in the world to live normally have three features in common: (1) low economic growth, (2) policies that discourage growth, and (3) resistance to the idea that other policies would be better.

Income growth seems to increase economic literacy, even though income level does not. Poor people whose income is rising — like recent immigrants — have more than the average amount of economic sense; rich people whose income is falling have less. (Caplan, Bryan. 2001. “What Makes People Think Like Economists? Evidence on Economic Cognition from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy.” Journal of Law and Economics, pp.395-426.)

There is more than one outcome with staying power (there are “multiple equilibria”). Good ideas lead to good policy, good policy leads to good growth, and good growth reinforces good ideas. Or bad ideas lead to bad policy, bad policy leads to bad growth, and bad growth cements bad ideas.

It is during times of depression and disarray that the public is most receptive to nonsense and scapegoating.

“The Idea Trap,” by Bryan Caplan

A study of of 13,000 US adults found that parents, from those with young children to empty nesters, reported being more miserable than non-parents. Robin Simon analyzed data from a national survey of families and households that asked respondents how many times in the past week, for example, they felt sad, distracted or depressed.

Unlike earlier studies, this one found moms and dads equally unhappy.

Michael Lewis said that over the last 150 years children have moved from being an economic advantage to an economic burden in the United States. We used to be able to send children to work in the fields; older kids tended to the babies, and when not working, they mostly stayed out of the way.

Meredith Small said parents have never been as alone as they are in the US today. In places like India, lots of people sleep in one big house. Higher birth rates mean there are older children to take care of the younger ones. Worldwide 90% of child care is done by other children.

“Bundles Of . . . Misery,” by Elizabeth Agnvall

In comparing differences between the sexes, researchers use a statistical measure called d. This indicates how far apart the averages of two groups (in this case men and women) are, taking into account the range of values that contribute to each average. The value of d for adult height is around 2. There is no arguing that in any given population men, on average, are taller than women. For behavioral and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference.

Janet Hyde collected all the important meta-analyses that have been conducted on differences between the sexes. (Pdf file here.) (A meta-analysis combines many studies by treating the result of each as a single piece of data for statistical purposes.) Of the 124 effect-sizes she calculated, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small.

The largest gaps were in physical attributes such as throwing velocity (d=2.14) and throwing distance (d=1.98). And sexuality — for example, frequency of masturbation (d=0.96) and attitudes about sex in a casual relationship (d=0.81). Men and women reported the same degree of sexual satisfaction.

On average men were physically more aggressive (d=0.6). But a study done in 1994 hints that if women think nobody is watching and judging them, and there are no physical consequences, they might be more aggressive than men.

In this study, participants played a video game in which they defended themselves from attackers, and the number of bombs they chose to drop was a measure of aggression. When participants thought they were known to the experimenter and were having their performance assessed, men dropped more bombs than women did. But when those same participants were given the impression that they were anonymous, women became the more enthusiastic bombers.

Women have as many, or more, angry thoughts as men. In a study carried out in 2004, Robin Simon and Leda Nath found no difference between the sexes in the reported frequency of incidents of feeling angry over a period of time. However, women tended to report anger that was more intense and prolonged.

Nicole Hess and Edward Hagen read study participants, who were undergraduate students, an “aggression-evoking scenario.” They were told they had just overheard a physically smaller classmate of the same sex making false and serious attacks on their reputation to a teacher. Women usually said that they would get their own back with gossip. Men were more evenly divided, with roughly half wanting to punch the slanderous classmate.

In animals such as humans, where there is a lot of maternal care, females find physical aggression less affordable. Research suggests that girls find such indirect or social aggression much more hurtful than boys do.

Males and females of any age are equally good at computation and at understanding mathematical concepts. However, after their mid-teens, men are better at problem solving than women are.

Males also have better spatial abilities than females. If asked to imagine rotating a three-dimensional object, a skill useful in engineering, the difference is quite large (d=0.73 and 0.56 in different studies). The limited evidence available suggests the difference is related to the post-birth testosterone surge in boys. Women who were exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb do not do noticeably better in spatial-rotation tasks.

Men and women are equally good at navigating. Women tend to rely on remembering landmarks, whereas men rely on their geometric skills to work out direction and distance.

There are relatively few women professors of math and science, yet there is little or no difference in average ability. A study of IQ, covering everyone born in Scotland in 1932, showed that there were more women in the middle of the distribution, but more men at both of the extremes — both more idiots and more prodigies.

Spatial ability is amenable to training in both sexes. The difference between the trained and the untrained has a d value of 0.4, and one programme to teach spatial ability improved the retention rate of women in engineering courses from 47% to 77%.

“The mismeasure of woman,” The Economist

According to a study conducted by Satoshi Kanazawa, Ph.D., bachelors are more xenophobic than married men, and women of any marital status.

Wealth and social status are men’s standard bargaining chips in the search for mates, but BMWs and second homes aren’t portable, nor are they universally appreciated. Women in the Amazon rain forest won’t be impressed by a Grammy award or a Nobel Prize. American women are not likely to be impressed by large penis sheaths. Nor can men brag to women about their achievements unless they speak the same language.

Evolutionary psychology maintains that women’s desirability resides in youth and beauty, attributes that are fairly universal. To test whether these evolutionary tenets translate into less globe-trotting for single men, Kanazawa examined a survey that detailed the travel itineraries and xenophobic attitudes of more than 16,000 Europeans. He found that married men are significantly less likely to travel or want to travel to foreign countries than are unmarried women. They are significantly more likely to find people of other nationalities and races “disturbing.” Kanazawa compared these findings with data on unmarried American men, and, again, single men reported more xenophobic attitudes than did single women.

Kanazawa also found that among Europeans and Americans, men’s greater reluctance to travel disappears when they marry. This makes sense: Not only do married men no longer need to attract mates, but a wife may be the lone sexual status symbol that is understood across cultures: From guppies to humans, females prefer males who have recently mated.

“Flying solo: foreign men may not attract mates,” by Kaja Perina

Beautiful people are 36% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first-born child.

The discovery supports the evolutionary theory that parents tend to produce children who benefit from their own attributes.

When parents have traits they can pass on that are better for boys than for girls, they are more likely to have boys. Such traits include large size, strength and aggression, which might help a man compete for mates.

Satoshi Kanazawa:

“Physical attractiveness is good for both men and women, but it is much better for women than for men. So physically attractive parents bias their offspring sex ratio to have more daughters.”

Dr Kanazawa based his conclusions on data from 3000 Americans taking part in an investigation called the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Dr Kanazawa:

“Because physical attractiveness is heritable, and because physically attractive parents have more daughters and less attractive parents have more sons, over time, the average level of physical attractiveness among women increases relative to men, so that women are, on average, more attractive than men.”

People from all societies agree on who is beautiful and who is ugly, he stressed.

Previous research by Dr Kanazawa has shown scientists, mathematicians and engineers, who have systematic “male brains,” are more likely to have sons than daughters. The same was true for big and tall parents, and violent fathers.

Conversely, nurses, social workers and kindergarten teachers with empathic “female brains” had more daughters.

“Beautiful people have girls,” by John Von Radowitz

Adrian White analysed data published by UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR, to create a global projection of subjective well-being: the first world map of happiness.

Participants in the various studies were asked questions related to happiness and satisfaction with life. The meta-analysis is based on the findings of over 100 different studies around the world, which questioned 80,000 people worldwide.

For this study data has also been analysed in relation to health, wealth and access to education.

Whilst collecting data on subjective well-being is not an exact science, the measures used are very reliable in predicting health and welfare outcomes.

Adrian White: “[A] nation’s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (correlation of .62), followed by wealth (.52), and then provision of education (.51).

“We were surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th and India 125th. These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being.

“The frustrations of modern life, and the anxieties of the age, seem to be much less significant compared to the health, financial and educational needs in other parts of the World.”

The 20 happiest nations in the World are:

1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles

Other notable results include:

23. USA
35. Germany
41. UK
62. France
82. China
90. Japan
125. India
167. Russia

The three least happy countries were:

176. Democratic Republic of the Congo
177. Zimbabwe
178. Burundi

“University of Leicester produces the first-ever ‘world map of happiness’“