Progress Daily

Most people would prefer to live in cities. We know that because they currently accept a financial penalty for doing so. Once you strip out the effect of the higher cost of living in cities – chiefly housing and tax – average city wages are lower than those in the countryside and small towns. Daniel Gross totted up the purchasing power of the NY dollar: a mere 61 cents; and higher NY wages compensate for less than half the difference. Edward Glaeser finds that a similar pattern holds across the US: real wages are lower, not higher, in the bigger cities.

Studies confirm that patents tend to spur other patents in the same region; commercial innovation is highly concentrated in urban areas.

Cities are economically resilient. Economies develop by changing; people are always being thrown out of work and always finding new jobs. That experience is less wrenching in a city.

Londoners contribute at least £1,700 ($3,450) a year more in tax than they receive in government spending. Wales, Scotland, the North East and Northern Ireland receive at least £2,000 per person more than they pay in tax.

“What have cities ever done for us?” by Tim Harford

Kenneth Kendler, et al., found that genes strongly influence who we choose as friends. The researchers studied the peer groups of approximately 1,800 male twins between the ages of 8 and 25 years old, having each subject describe the level of “social deviance” among their friends, such as how many of their friends got drunk, used or sold drugs, or damaged property. The research showed that an individual’s selection of friends — whether they chose to socialize with fewer or more socially deviant peers — was shaped by genetic factors. Researchers also found that the influence of genes increased over time.

“You’ve Got to Have … Genes,” by Sarah Kliff

There is less value in a short but happy life than in a long and happy life. The level and duration of happiness are combined in Ruut Veenhoven’s index of “Happy Life Years,” which is computed by multiplying life-expectancy in a country by average happiness on a scale of 0 to 1. (See “Apparent Quality of Life: How Long and Happy People Live and “The Four Qualities of Life: Ordering Concepts and Measures of the Good Life.”)

These days, the average citizen can expect to live 62 happy years in the U.S, 51 happy years in the EU-8, and 47 happy years in Japan. This is much more than the expected 13 happy life years in present-day Zimbabwe. These numbers are much higher than would have been the case two centuries ago in Western nations, when life was much shorter and probably less happy.

Over the last 33 years, no less than 6.2 additional Happy Life Years were added in the EU, 4.5 in Japan, and 6.2 in the U.S. This increase in overall quality of life is unprecedented in human history.

One of happiness’s biological functions is to serve as a “go signal” (”What Good are Positive Emotions?“). Research shows that the effects of happiness are typically positive. Happiness adds to creativity, facilitates social functioning, and tends to enhance good citizenship (”The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?“). It also protects physical health and lengthens life (”Healthy Happiness: Effects of Happiness on Physical Health and the Consequences for Preventive Health Care“).

People appear to live the happiest lives in free, democratic societies, and the strongest correlates of happiness are independence and activity (”Happiness as an Aim in Public Policy: The Greatest Happiness Principle“).

“The Data Tell a Different Story,” by Ruut Veenhoven

Norbert Schwarz, et al., calculates “gross national happiness” by using the day reconstruction method in which people are asked to recollect memories of the previous working day by writing a short diary.

They are told to think of their day as a series of episodes in a film and are asked a series of questions about how they felt during each event or activity.

They then give a mark on their enjoyment of each episode on a scale of one to 6. The totals are divided by the number of hours taken by each activity to produce a simple score for the day.

The researchers assessed how 909 US working women felt during 28 types of activity and found that sex, relaxing with friends and having lunch with colleagues brought the most enjoyment. This was followed by watching television alone, shopping with a spouse and cooking on their own.

Commuting, housework and too much contact with their boss rated as the least pleasant activities.

Taking care of children was also among the less enjoyable activities.

Norbert Schwarz: “When we sample all the times that parents spend with their children, the picture is less positive than parents expect. Saying that you generally don’t enjoy spending time with your kids is terrible but admitting that they were a pain last night is quite acceptable.”

Women who slept poorly, on average, enjoyed their day as little as a typical person enjoys commuting. Those who usually slept well enjoyed their day as much as most people enjoy watching television. Tight work deadlines were also a powerful factor in upsetting women’s daily moods.

General life circumstances — such as wealth, job security, or whether someone is single or married — had a relatively small impact on happiness.

As long as the women were not battling poverty, income did not have an influence.

“[C]ommuting is a very negative experience that takes up considerable time every day. Income, however, has relatively little influence on daily feelings. You may be better off arranging for more sleep than working for a pay rise.”

People spent the bulk of their waking hours engaged in the activities they enjoyed the least, including work, housework and commuting.

“Happiness is the new economics,” Sarah-Kate Templeton

Angus Maddison has shown that human economies grew very little, if at all, for most of human history. Between 1000 and 1820 or so, annual economic growth was around 0.05% a year — which meant that people living in 1800 were only mildly better off than people living in 1000. Between 1820 and today, world per capita real income grew 20 times as fast as it did in the previous 8 centuries.

The diffusion of technology, medicine, and agricultural techniques has meant that developing countries have enjoyed dramatic improvements in “human development indicators,” even if most of their citizens remain poor.

Technology can diminishing the demands made by affluence and population growth. For example, productivity gains have dramatically reduced the environmental burden of farming (at least on the land — there have not been similar advances in the efficient use of water) over the past 40 years and shrunk the amount of land needed to feed the world. More recently, technological improvements in the scrubbing of power-plant smokestacks have brought about a sharp reduction in the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air.

Developed countries generally have cleaner air, cleaner water, more forest cover, and less cropland devoted to food production than developing countries do, even though the latter are much poorer. The obvious, and important, exception is carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.

The USA is arguably less polluted today than at any time in the last 100 years, and the last 4 decades have seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of air and water.

The percentage of the world’s population that is poor has fallen over the past two decades (although 2.7 billion people still live on less than $2 a day). And inequality — at least among individuals globally — has declined some as well.

The number of countries that have dramatically improved their standards of living in the era of globalization is surprisingly small — and most of them are in Asia.

The economies of sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union have in many cases actually shrunk over the past 2 decades, while most of Latin America has seen little growth, and even Asia’s “little tigers” (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand) have spent much of the past 7 years recovering from the 1990s Asian financial crisis. (Most of these countries have nonetheless seen their human development indicators improve, thanks to the diffusion of technology and health care.)

China and India, together, are responsible for almost all of the reduction in poverty in the world in the past 2 decades.

“Better and Better,” James Surowiecki’s review of Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World

Americans buy the biggest vehicles available, but polls show that, given an option, some three-quarters of them vote for dramatic increases in fuel-economy standards. Polls that explicitly lay out the potential trade-offs involved still find support for tougher standards. A recent survey of pickup owners found that 70% strongly favored tougher requirements.

Back in the 1970s, players were allowed, but not required, to wear helmets, and most players chose to go helmet-less, despite the risk of severe head trauma. But when they were asked in secret ballots most players also said that the league should require them to wear helmets. Not wearing a helmet conferred a slight advantage on the ice. The players wanted to have their heads protected, but as individuals they couldn’t afford to jeopardize their effectiveness.

Between 1984 and 2002, the average vehicle got 20% heavier and its zero-to-sixty acceleration improved by 24%, while fuel efficiency stagnated. By contrast, between 1975, when fuel-economy standards were first introduced, and 1984, average fuel economy improved by 62%, without any decline in performance.

“Fuel for Thought,” by James Surowiecki