A Global Perspective (1981–2007)

Until recently, it was widely held that happiness fluctuates around set points, so that neither individuals nor societies can lastingly increase their happiness. Even though recent research showed that some individuals move enduringly above or below their set points, this does not refute the idea that the happiness levels of entire societies remain fixed. Our article, however, challenges this idea: Data from representative national surveys carried out from 1981 to 2007 show that happiness rose in 45 of the 52 countries for which substantial time-series data were available. Regression analyses suggest that that the extent to which a society allows free choice has amajor impact on happiness. Since 1981, economic development, democratization, and increasing social tolerance have increased the extent to which people perceive that they have free choice, which in turn has led to higher levels of happiness around the world, as the human development model suggests. Psychologists, economists, biologists, sociologists, and political scientists have long investigated human happiness, and one claim found widespread acceptance until recently: Happiness remains constant. Research implies that neither rising prosperity nor severe misfortune permanently affect happiness. After a period of adjustment, individuals return to their baseline levels of well-being, leaving humanity on a ‘‘hedonic treadmill’’ (Brickman & Campbell, 1981; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwartz, & Stone, 2004). Similarly, as entire countries become richer, relative gains and losses neutralize each other across populations, bringing no overall increase in the happiness of their citizens (Easterlin, 1974; Kenny, 2004). Moreover, biological factors are closely linked with a sense of well-being (Ebstein, Novick, Umansky, Priel, & Osher, 1996; Hamer, 1996), and twin studies suggest that happiness is heritable to a significant extent (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996; Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade 2005). Individual differences in happiness may therefore reflect inherent differences in temperament and consequently resist change (Diener & Lucas, 1999). One widely accepted view is that happiness fluctuates around a fixed set point (Headey & Wearing, 1989; Larsen, 2000; Williams & Thompson, 1993). Insofar as this set point is biologically determined, neither individual efforts nor social policy can bring lasting changes in happiness. Another explanation for the apparent stability of the aggregate happiness of nations is social comparison theory (Easterlin, 1974, 2003). According to this account, happiness stays the same in the face of rising income because of a shift in reference. If happiness is shaped by one’s relative position in a society, then even if a nation’s overall economy grows, only those with above-average gains will experience rising happiness, and these increases will be offset by decreases among those with below-average gains. A large body of evidence does indicate that the subjective well-being (SWB) levels of given countries are stable. For example, Inglehart (1990) demonstrated that life satisfaction levels were very stable from 1973 to 1988 in most West European countries. Diener and Oishi (2000), Easterlin (2005), Inglehart and Klingemann (2000), and Kahneman and Krueger (2006) presented similar findings. But the strongest support for the claim that the happiness levels of countries have not risen over time comes from the United States, which provides by far the longest and most detailed time-series data on SWB. Hundreds of surveys have measured happiness and life satisfaction among the American public in almost every year since 1946. No other country has a comparable database, and the US data show a flat trend from 1946 to the present. Address correspondence to Ronald Inglehart, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248; e-mail: [email protected]. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 264 Volume 3—Number 4 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science at UCLA on April 17, 2014 pps.sagepub.com Downloaded from Because the happiness levels of given societies do not seem to change over time, the idea that economic development brings rising happiness has been widely rejected. Although rich nations show higher levels of SWB than do poor countries, these differences may reflect cultural differences in what happiness means. THEORETICAL DISCUSSION Can Happiness Change? Recent research questions the view that the happiness of individuals is unchanging. Diener, Lucas, and Scollon (2006) demonstrated that the SWB levels of some people can and do change over time. Fujita and Diener (2005) analyzed data from a 17-year German panel study, finding that 24% of the respondents’ life satisfaction levels changed significantly from the first 5 years of the study to the last 5 years. Similarly, Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, and Diener (2003) analyzed a 15-year longitudinal study of the effects of marital transitions on life satisfaction. They found that, on average, individuals moved back toward their baseline levels of satisfaction, but a significant numbers of individuals remained above their original baseline level and others remained below it. Individuals are not necessarily trapped on a hedonic treadmill. What about nations? Findings that happiness can change for individuals do not necessarily mean that the happiness levels of given societies change. Social comparison theory holds that the relative gains and losses of different individuals in a given nation will cancel each other out, resulting in no discernible shifts upward or downward for a society as a whole. Cross-sectional comparisons of nations show that there is considerable variation in the happiness of their people and that economic development is strongly correlated with happiness: Inglehart (1990, Chapter 1) analyzed data from 24 countries covering a wide range of economic levels and found a .67 correlation between per capita gross national product (GNP) and life satisfaction. He interpreted this as implying that economic development is conducive to rising happiness. Until now, longitudinal evidence has not provided compelling support for this interpretation. Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003) argued that growth does increase happiness, demonstrating that income was positively correlated with happiness in 14 of the 21 nations for which data were available from 1972 to 1994. However, Easterlin (2005) argued that their findings at the level of specific nations were not robust and relied on different measures of happiness administered to different types of samples and thus failed to control for seasonal effects. Even though they demonstrated an increase in ‘‘happy life years’’ across all nations for which considerable time-series data are available, this result is almost entirely driven by the increase in life expectancy and not by an increase in happiness itself. More recently, Hagerty and Veenhoven (2006) demonstrated statistically significant increases in SWB in four of eight highincome countries and in three of four low-income countries for which a long time series was available, but the evidence did not seem decisive. The authors summed up the debate as follows: ‘‘The difference arises from the fact that the available data are not too clear and therefore allow different interpretations. Easterlin reads the data as showing that the glass is half empty, while we see the glass to be half full.’’ (Hagerty & Veenhoven, 2006, p. 422). The claim that happiness has risen in most countries remains unsettled and is not generally accepted. The present article reports cross-national longitudinal findings that are not undermined by problems of methodological incomparability. The Values Survey have asked the same questions in the same format to large representative national samples of respondents in scores of countries from 1981 to 2007, allowing a more definitive test of the hypothesis that happiness has increased in most countries (a hypothesis that has been proven true, as we will see later in the article). Theoretical Frame: Human Development and Happiness As important as it is to determine if the happiness of nations has changed, it is even more important to understand why it may have changed. Economic development within a nation is a likely starting point for any explanation because it is demonstrably associated with psychological changes that in turn should impact people’s happiness (Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995). Inglehart (1997) hypothesized that economic development brings a societal-level shift frommaximizing economic growth to maximizing SWB (see Fig. 1): The transition from a society of scarcity to a society of security brings a dramatic increase in subjective well-being. But we find a threshold at which economic growth no longer seems to increase Fig. 1. Economic development leads to a shift in survival strategies. From Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, by R. Inglehart, 1997, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Copyright 1997 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted with permission. Volume 3—Number 4 265 Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson, and Christian Welzel at UCLA on April 17, 2014 pps.sagepub.com Downloaded from subjective well-being significantly. This may be linked with the fact that at this level, starvation is no longer a real concern for most people. Survival begins to be taken for granted. Significant numbers of Postmaterialists begin to emerge and for them, further economic gains no longer produce an increase in subjective wellbeing. From a rational actor’s perspective, one would expect economic development to eventually bring a shift in survival strategies. Figure 2–4 suggests how this works. At low levels of economic development, even modest economic gains bring a high return in terms of caloric intake, clothing, shelter, medical care and ultimately, in life expectancy itself. For individuals to give top priority to maximizing economic gains, and for a society to give top priority to economic growth, is a highly effective survival strategy. But once a society has reached a certain threshold of development . . . one reaches a point at which further economic growth brings only minimal gains in both life expectancy and in subjective well being. There is still a good deal of cross-national variation, but from this point on non-economic aspects of life become increasingly important influences on how long, and how well, people live. Beyond this point, a rational strategy would be to place increasing emphasis on quality of life concerns, rather than to continue the inflexible pursuit of economic growth as if it were a good in itself. (Inglehart, 1997, pp. 64–65) This societal-level shift is linked with individual-level value changes, from giving top priority to economic and physical security toward giving top priority to self-expression values that emphasize participation, freedom of expression, and quality of life. Under conditions of scarcity, people focus on survival needs, giving top priority to economic and physical security. Economic development increases people’s sense of existential security, leading them to shift their emphasis from survival values toward self-expression values and free choice, which is a more direct way to maximize happiness and life satisfaction. The underlying theme of this shift in life strategies is to deemphasize external authority and maximize individual autonomy. How it operates is spelled out more fully in the human development model proposed by Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann (2003) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005). This model proposes that human development shifts emphasis from the pursuit of happiness through economic means toward a broader pursuit of happiness by maximizing free choice in all realms of life. The belief that one has free choice and control over one’s life is closely linked with happiness (Johnson &Krueger, 2006), and this link seems to be universal. Happiness is linked with people’s sense of freedom across all major cultural zones (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005, p. 140). In many societies, people value free choice as much as they value economic security (Sen, 2001), and emphasis on freedom increases with rising economic security. The fact that people change the way in which they pursue happiness does not necessarily mean that they will attain it. But since 1981, these shifts in individual-level values have contributed to societal changes that are conducive to human happiness. Since 1981, self-expression values have become increasingly widespread around the world, contributing to democratization, growing support for gender equality, and growing acceptance of outgroups such as gays and lesbians (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Inglehart (1990) found that happiness is strongly related to democracy (Barro, 1999; Frey & Stutzer, 2000; Inglehart & Klingemann, 2000). This relationship seems to be reciprocal: High levels of SWB are conducive to democracy, and democracy provides a wider range of free choice, which is conducive to SWB (Haller & Hadler, 2004; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Ott, 2001; Veenhoven, 2000; Welsch, 2003). Like democratization, social tolerance broadens the range of choices available to people, thus enhancing happiness. Accordingly, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) found that support for gender equality and tolerance of outgroups were strongly linked with happiness—not just because tolerant people are happier, but because living in a tolerant society enhances everyone’s freedom of choice. Similarly, Schyns (1998) argued that gender equality is linked with happiness. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, dozens of societies experienced transitions to democracy that enhanced freedom of expression, freedom to travel, and free choice in politics. Moreover, from 1981 to 2007, support for both gender equality and tolerance of outgroups increased substantially in most of the countries monitored by the Values Surveys (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Furthermore, during the past two decades, low-income countries containing fully half of the world’s population have experienced one of the highest rates of economic growth in history, allowing them to emerge from subsistence-level poverty. By a favorable combination of circumstances, societal changes of the past two decades have increased both the prosperity of people in less-prosperous societies and the political and social freedom of people in middle-income and high-income societies, enhancing the extent to which people in both types of societies have free choice in how to live their lives. We hypothesize that these changes have been conducive to rising levels of happiness within entire societies.