Johan Norberg on happiness

By Brian Micklethwait | 23 September 2005

Johan Norberg, author of In Defence of Global Capitalism has written an essay called The Scientist's Pursuit of Happiness.

What makes us happy is control over our own lives, the feeling that we are, by our own efforts, making progress, and the feeling that life will be even better for our descendants. Money as such is not the key variable. It's how we get it. Neither lottery winners nor constant welfare recipients get much happier as a result of their apparent good fortune.

Belief in the future grows when poor countries begin to experience growth, when markets open up, when incomes increase and people's decisions begin to affect their place in society. For a recent example, look at Ireland. This country reported declining levels of life satisfaction between the early 1970s and the late 1980s. Ireland did not grow poorer during this time, but it had low growth and high unemployment. A lack of opportunities for the young led to high emigration.

In the 1990s things turned around. Rapid liberalisation, foreign investment and information technology doubled Irish GDP per capita in ten years. It became easy to start a business and to get a job. Unemployment fell from about 15 to 5% and emigrants returned. At the same time, reported levels of happiness grew rapidly, by about one point on a ten-point scale - a dramatic change for such a slow moving indicator. Today, Ireland is one of the world's happiest countries

It is worth focussing on a relatively rich country like Ireland because it has been said, most notably by Richard Layard, whose book about Happiness is the main target of Norberg's piece, that economic growth brings diminishing returns. Yes, that first spurt of growth out of abject poverty in a formerly abjectly poor country cheers
everyone up, temporarily, but soon they are all on a treadmill which churns out more money but which does not buy any more happiness.

But if you are rich, you are only on a treadmill if you like being on a treadmill, which many do. You can, on the other hand, if you prefer, just say no:

If you don't think you get happier by hard work and mobility, just skip it. A survey showed that 48% of Americans had, in the last five years, reduced their working hours, declined promotion, lowered their material expectations or moved to a quieter place.

Read the whole thing. If you agree with the kind of ideas promoted day in and day out at this blog, doing this will make you happy.