Does Economic Growth Improve Human Morale
During the mid-1980s my family and I spent a sabbatical year in the historic town of St. Andrews, Scotland. Comparing life there with life in America, we were impressed by a seeming disconnection between national wealth and well-being. To most Americans, Scottish life would have seemed Spartan (清贫的) . Incomes were about half that in the U. S. Among families in the Kingdom of Fife surrounding St. Andrews, 44 percent did not own a car, and we never met a family that owned two. Central heating in this place not far south of Iceland was, at that time, still a luxury. In hundreds of conversations during our year there and during three half-summer stays since, we repeatedly noticed that, despite their simpler living, the Scots appeared no less joyful than Americans. We heard complaints about Margaret Thatcher, but never about being underpaid or unable to afford wants. With less money there was no less satisfaction with living, no less warmth of spirit, no less pleasure in one another’’s company.
Are Rich Americans Happier
Within any country, such as our own, are rich people happier In poor countries, such as Bangladesh and India, being relatively well-off does make for somewhat greater well-being. Psychologically as well as materially, it is much better to be high caste (印度的社会等级) than low caste. We humans need food, rest, warmth, and social contact.
But in affluent (富裕的) countries, where nearly everyone can afford life’’s necessities, increasing affluence matters surprisingly little. In the U. S., Canada and Europe, the correlation between income and happiness is, as University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart noted in the 1980s 16-nation study, "surprisingly weak (indeed, virtually negligible)." Happiness is lower among the very poor. But once comfortable, more money provides diminishing returns. The second piece of pie, or the second $ 50,000, never tastes as good as the first. So far as happiness is concerned, it hardly matters whether one drives a BMW or, like so many of the Scots, walks or rides a bus.
Even very rich people — the Forbes’’ 100 wealthiest Americans surveyed by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener — are only slightly happier than average. With net worths all exceeding $ 100 million, providing ample (足够的) money to buy things they don’’t need and hardly care about, 4 in 5 of the 49 people responding to the survey agreed that "Money can increase OR decrease happiness, depending on how it is used." And some were indeed unhappy. One fabulously wealthy man said he could never remember being happy. One woman reported that money could not undo misery caused by her children’’s problems.
Does Happiness Rise with Affluence
We have scrutinized the American dream of achieved wealth and well-being by comparing rich and unrich countries, and rich and unrich people. That leaves the final question: Over time, does happiness rise with affluence
Typically not. Lottery winners appear to gain but a temporary jolt of joy from their winnings. Looking back, they feel delighted to have won. Yet the euphoria (愉快和兴奋的感觉) doesn’’t last. In fact, previously enjoyed activities such as reading may become less pleasurable. Compared to the high of winning a million dollars, ordinary pleasures pale.
On a smaller scale, a jump in our income can boost our morale, for a while. "But in the long run," notes Inglehart, "neither an ice cream cone nor a new car nor becoming rich and famous produces the same feelings of delight that it initially did... Happiness is not the result of being rich, but a temporary consequence of having recently become richer." Ed Diener’’s research confirms that those whose incomes have increased over a 10-year period are not happier than those whose income has not increased. Wealth, it therefore seems, is like health: Although its utter absence can breed misery, having it does not guarantee happiness. Happiness is less a matter of getting what we want than of wanting what we have.
Are We Happier Today
We can also ask whether, over time, our collective happiness has floated upward with the rising economic tide. Are we happier today than in 1940, when two out of five homes lacked a shower or bathtub, heat often meant feeding a furnace wood or coal, and 35 percent of homes had no toilet Or consider 1957, when economist John Galbraith was about to describe the United States as The Affluent Society. Americans’’ per person income, expressed in today’’s dollars, was less than $ 8,000. Today it is more than $ 16,000, thanks to increased real wages into the 1970s, increased nonwage income, and the doubling of married women’’s employment. Compared to 1957, we are therefore "the doubly affluent society" — with double what money buys including twice as many cars per person, not to mention microwave ovens, big screen color TVs, home computers, and $ 200 billion a year spent in restaurants and bars — two and a half times our 1960 inflation-adjusted restaurant spending per person. From 1960 to 1990, the percentage of us with
--dishwashers zoomed from 7 to 45 percent,
--clothes dryers rose from 20 to 69 percent,
--air conditioners soared from 15 to 70 percent.
Not the Best of Times for the Human Spirit
So, believing that a little more money would make us a little happier, and having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over nearly four decades, are we now happier
We are not. Since 1957, the number telling the University of Chicago’’s National Opinion Research Center that they are "very happy" has declined from 35 to 30 percent. Twice as rich, and a little less happy. In fact, between 1956 and 1988, the percentage of Americans saying they were "pretty well satisfied with your present financial situation" dropped from 42 to 30 percent.
We are also more often downright miserable. Among Americans born since World War II, depression has increased dramatically — tenfold, reports University of Pennsylvania clinical researcher Martin Seligman. Today’’s twenty-five year olds are much more likely to recall a time in their life when they were despondent (失望的，沮丧的) and despairing than are their 75-year-old grandparents, despite the grandparents having had many more years to suffer all kinds of disorder, from broken legs to the anguish (极度痛苦) of depression. Researchers debate the actual extent of rising depression. . . but no matter how we define depression, the findings persist: Today’’s youth and young adults have grown up with much more affluence, slightly less overall happiness, and much greater risk of depression, not to mention tripled teen suicide and all the other social pathologies (病理学) we have considered. Never has a culture experienced such physical comfort combined with such psychological misery. Never have we felt so free, or had our prisons so overstuffed. Never have we been so sophisticated about pleasure, or so likely to suffer broken relationships.
These are the best of times materially, "a time of elephantine (巨大的) vanity and greed," observes Garrison Keillor, but they are not the best times for the human spirit. William Bennett, no critic of free market economies, is among those who recognize the futility (无效，无益) of economics without ethics and money without a mission: "If we have full employment and greater economic growth — if we have cities of gold and alabaster (雪花石膏) — but our children have not learned how to walk in goodness, justice, and mercy, then the American experiment, not matter how gilded, will have failed."
Obvious disconnection between national wealth and well-being struck the author during his stay in St. Andrew, Scotland.