Comments on: John Schumaker on Happiness

By: nursing scrubs

nursing scrubs — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:03:22 +0000

great statistical implemention method measuring the attitude of women's and men's.

By: China Travel Deals

China Travel Deals — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:13:40 +0000

Different point of view from that post. Interesting to say the least.

By: funeral flowers

funeral flowers — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:37:53 +0000

I don't totally agree with the effect of modernization on the well-being of Bedouin women (n = 150) was investigated. Results show that the more modern the objective circumstances of the women's lives, and/or the more modern the husbands' attitudes (as perceived by their wives), the greater their subjective well-being(SWB). The women's own attitudes affected their SWB only via interaction with their husbands' attitudes and/or life circumstances. If the husbands' attitudes were modern, their wives' attitudes were not significantly related to SWB. However, if the husbands' attitudes were traditional, then the more modern the wives' attitudes, the lower their SWB. These findings repeated themselves, to a lesser degree, with life circumstances. The results fit the latest theoretical developments on SWB, and reflect the changes taking place within Bedouin society.

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:27:28 +0000

mk,

Actually, in the U.S. the richer people are, the more they work. See Steven Landsburg’s recent Slate piece. But I didn’t primarily mean to be talking about “leisure time.” Rather, I had in mind the discretion to make a living doing things you enjoy. I really meant to say that the wealthier a society is, the more discretion people living in it have… You can live a very nice life in the U.S. making pottery or arranging flowers or whatever you like for $15,000 a year, if you choose to live in the right place. A context of abundance makes work less like work for more and more people.

By: mk

mk — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:13:13 +0000

“the wealthier people are, the more discretion they have in how they use their time”

Do we know that this is true in an absolute, not just relative sense? I.e. I definitely agree that very wealthy folks in a society will have more opportunity for leisure, compared to poorer folks.

But if the whole society gets richer, do the people at the bottom really take more leisure time? Or do they keep working just as hard because, for example, they still care very much that they are on the bottom, and they still want to move up from the bottom?

I can see how it would be rational to use more leisure time (under some defition of “rational”). But is this how people actually react to increased absolute wealth (when there is no increase in relative wealth)?

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:03:18 +0000

Will, thanks for the press on my review. I tend to “moralize” happiness in my own thinking, and so there is something appealing to me in Schumaker’s work, but it is implausibly polemical in places – your suggested “honest” title hits that nail on the head – and there is a Layard-esque sort of philosophical sloppiness. There is something to his points about sustainability (although it probably does not involve getting “back to nature” in any literal sense) – and I take it that the point of dismissing “bad” kinds of happiness as not *really* happiness has to do with the idea that if we really want to be happy over time, our pursuits should be toward sustainable goods.