Under the Microscope / Prof William Reville:Gross national product (GNP) is the index commonly quoted to indicate the economic well-being of a nation. But, if we wish to indicate the overall wellbeing of the country, a much better index would be gross national happiness (GNH).
The London School of Economics economist Richard Layard has many important things to say on the subject in his latest book Happiness(Penguin, 2005).
Layard defines happiness simply as feeling good and enjoying life. We all want to be happy and we devoutly wish happiness for our children. But how do we achieve happiness? The most common fallacy in this regard is that lots of money brings happiness. For example, the TV ads for our National Lottery promise that pots of money bring happiness by allowing one to give up work, live in the sun, buy big cars and houses and generally pursue hedonistic pleasures.
Despite the fact that it is known for certain that money in itself will not make you happy, most of us are remarkably determined to test this principle for ourselves. In the words of Spike Milligan, "All I want is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy".
Layard is particularly strong on the relationship between money and happiness. Surveys have shown that happiness has not increased since the 1950s, despite the fact that, in real terms, average salaries have more than doubled, we have more cars, bigger houses, a shorter working week, more holidays, more food, more clothes, more central heating and better health.
Money correlates with happiness only when you have very little money. It is not possible to be happy if you live in grinding poverty and your happiness will rise steeply as you acquire sufficient money to satisfy the basic necessities. But the surprising thing is that, as many studies have shown, once average income exceeds what is required to cover the basics, further pay rises bring no greater happiness. In other words, if nurses and medical consultants swapped salaries, neither party would end up happier or unhappier! (Although the consultants might need a while to adjust.)
Why, above a certain level, does more money not automatically bring more happiness? Well, one reason is that about half of our predisposition to have either a sunny or a sour outlook on life is genetically determined and varies from person to person. The other reason is that most of us switch from an absolute way of looking at money to a relative way once we rise above having just enough to satisfy basic necessities.
When you have too little money to buy a car to commute a long distance to and from work, you look forward to acquiring the most modest car. But, when you get enough money to buy a basic little car, you quickly become conscious of your neighbour's flashier bigger model and your happiness level slips back to what it was when you had no car. As Karl Marx explained: "A house may be large or small, and as long as the surrounding houses are equally small, it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But, if a palace rises beside the little house, the little house shrinks into a hut."
Psychologists - for example, Gregory Berns, author of Satisfaction(Henry Holt 2005) - tell us that happiness is not to be found by directly pursuing it as an end in itself - rather it is the byproduct of the satisfaction you feel from consciously living a productive life, ie deciding to achieve something, setting goals and working towards them. We are structured psychologically to accept credit only for our own conscious efforts and actions. Winning the lottery by pure luck will allow you to pleasure yourself but you will only achieve satisfaction through your own conscious efforts. The message is pursue satisfaction, not pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure usually lands you on a hedonistic treadmill that often ends in misery.
We are frequently reminded that Celtic Tiger Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world. This means that GNP per head of population is high. We also now have many advantages that we didn't have in the past - full employment, widespread access to third-level education, gender-equality in access to almost all careers, improved leisure facilities, and much more.
This is all good, but where does the even more important index of GDH stand? Not so good, I'm afraid, because paralleling the positive trends in economics and other areas in Ireland over the past 20 years, several negative social trends have also worsened - a sharp rise in national consumption of alcohol, youth binge-drinking and drug-taking, increased suicide rates, great increase in violent crimes, sharp rise in births to single mothers (many in poor economic circumstances), weakened sense of community, and so on. Overall, when the negatives are subtracted from the positives, we are no happier now than we were when we had much less in the material sense.
We all have much more money now than we had in the past. This is good, but, in itself, will not make us any happier. In fact, money can be quite dangerous if spent largely in the pursuit of pleasure. We have been very successful in improving the economy and we should be proud of this, but it is now time to devote energy to improving quality of life in other respects. Our happiness resides largely in these latter dimensions and we can rest assured that efforts spent in this regard will be well rewarded.
William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC - http://understandingscience.ucc.ie