Affluence and Happiness Studies

After buying a new car this weekend, I suppose I should really ask myself if the car, which looks like a fleet hearse with an iPod connection, will make me happy. The economic historian Avner Offer would say, fat chance.

In his new book called The Challenge of Affluence Offer takes up happiness studies from the point of view of economics. Orthodox economics says that people should be allowed to make their own choices; denying choice means denying freedom. Offer points out a problem with this point of view: people have a tendency to put short-term satisfaction above long-term well-being. Affluence societies exacerbate this tendency by offering some highly enticing short-term pleasures, like heated leatherette seats. As Christopher Shea explains in the Boston Globe,

In general, the affluent people in any given society do a better job of making decisions that pay off in the long run: investing more time in school, eating less junk food, watching less TV, saving more. Offer accepts this. But he adds that what’s true of individuals isn’t true of societies: The faster a nation grows, the faster it throws fresh temptations at people . . . citizens of affluent societies, whether they’re rich or poor, don’t have the time either to develop new mores or public policies to deal with the new temptations.

Offer cites a number of social problems that currently plague affluent countries like the US and the UK, including high divorce rates, sexual promiscuity among teenagers, increased working hours, and most seriously, increased psychological disorders amongst the young. In a related development, Cornell researchers have found a statistical correlation between the rise in the availability in cable TV and a rise in autism.

As gloomy as Offer's conclusions are, happiness studies suggest that we're going to be happy pretty much no matter what we do. According to happiness researchers, happiness is a level that's genetically determined. Trying to be happier is like trying to be taller. On the other hand, putting off pleasures won't necessarily make your life any more pleasurable in the future. Putting off buying an Audi A6 now so you can afford an A8 later isn't a sound strategy for long-term welfare, either. The only factor that's guaranteed to make you miserable is poverty; the level of wealth needed to make you happy is relatively low. All you really need to be careful about is impoverishing yourself.

But if Offer is right, the implications for conservative philosophy, or at least the brand embraced by the Republican Party, is profound. The GOP's alliance of social conservatives and corporate interests has always held together on the presumption that social pathologies were the result of bad morals. Offer suggests that social problems within the middle class are the necessary by-product of Wall Street-approved balance sheets. Our relentless economic expansion is driving us crazy. Unfortunately, the alternative--stagnation and job loss--will really bum us out.