Are We Happy Yet?
Though happiness is a very subjective idea, making it difficult to determine what influences or creates happiness, researchers and others have spent a great deal of time looking into what makes people happy or not. Read about some of these influences on happiness by checking out the resources below.
Family: Marital, Parenting Status, etc.
- For Happiness, Seek Family Not Fortune: This WebMD article provides a look at a study which shows that for most people happiness comes more from family ties than from money.
- Social Support, Networks, and Happiness: This newsletter from the Population Referance Bureau looks at how people can remain happy as they age. The primary conclusion of the study being that maintaining close social networks can increase happiness.
- Science: Marriage and Happiness: This Time magazine article provides a good summary of some of the past scholarship and opinions that have gone into marriage and happiness. It begins back in the 1930s and traces the evolution of the idea of a connection between marriage and happiness through to modern day.
- Happily Ever After? Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce,and Happiness in Germany: This academic article by Anke C. Zimmermann and Richard A. Easterlin from the University of Southern California looks at how marriage and happiness can be determined by alternate factors such as cohabitation prior to the marriage. The article also looks at the relationship between happiness and marriage based on whether the marriage is a first marriage or not.
- Parenting and Happiness: This article from The Economist takes a look at both the positive and negative studies regarding the relationship between parenting and happiness. As it shows, in some cases parenting seems to decrease happiness, while other studies have shown that it increases overall happiness.
Income
- Income and Happiness: This quick, summarizing article from the Association for Psychological Science shows that on average, people with higher income are more happy. The article looks at people within the United States as well as a broader survey of the wealth of nations and happiness.
- Link between income and happiness is mainly an illusion: While many people assume that money can buy at least some form of happiness, this article looks at how that might not be true. It takes a look at the result of a survey asking about happiness relative to income levels.
- Do we need $75,000 a year to be happy?: This article examines a new study from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University that shows that people who earn less than $75,000 a year tend to be incrementally less happy.
- High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being: This article looks at how happiness and wealth can be evaluated. Namely, it makes the conclusion that wealth can make life easier and thus improve well being, but it does not increase happiness -- only satisfaction.
- Income and happiness: earning and spending as sources of discontent: This article takes somewhat of an opposite approach to the standard trope in arguing that by accounting for how money is spent, income can actually make people less happy.
Work and Education
- Education and happiness in the school-to-work transition: This article looks comprehensively at how education can help the transition into working. In particular, it looks at how different types of transitions affect happiness in the workplace.
- Education, Work, and Happiness: Some Policy Paradoxes: This graphical PowerPoint presentation shows the connection between education at various levels and happiness, including how education can play into better job satisfaction which can also increase happiness.
- Happiness and Education: Theory, Practice, and Possibility: This article takes a look at the how increased choices in the workforce can increase happiness. In addition, it looks at how policy decisions can affect these possibilities, and as such, have the potential to increase happiness.
- Happiness and Education: This abstract for a book looks at how education can affect happiness. It explores not only the effect of education on happiness, but also happiness through studies of classroom happiness, among others.
- Finding Happiness at Work: By showing that people on average spend 90,000 hours at work during their lifetime, this article emphasises the importance of making smart choices in working in order to have a happy life.
Physical: Age, Gender, Race, Weight
- The U-bend of life: This Economist article looks at how people grow more happy after they pass their middle ages. It shows how happiness in life follows a "U" shape on a graph.
- Happiness of Men and Women in Later Life: This article looks at how age affects happiness differently between men and women. In particular, it looks at how women's advantage over men in happiness earlier in life is reversed later in life.
- For Blacks, Money Doesn't Predict Happiness: This Pew Research study looks at how happiness can be affected by money differently, depending on race. The study is displayed in an easy-to-understand, graphical format.
- Race and Happiness: This article discusses a study by Michigan State University about race and happiness. It concludes that racial minorities are happier if they identify strongly with their race.
- Excercise, Weight Loss, and Happiness: This article from Psychology Today looks at how weight loss and happiness can be tied together. In particular, it looks at the benefits on happiness of various forms of weight loss.
Life Choices
- Gross National Happiness: This government study looks at to what extent the United States Government can and does make people happy. It is a subject that is approached as if it were an economic study, like gross domestic product.
- Republican Bliss: The Selfish Road to Happiness: This right-leaning article discusses the results of a recent Pew Research Study that found that, on average, republicans were more happy than democrats nationwide.
- Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals. Discuss.: This article from Freakonomics, the authors, movie makers, and radio producers, discusses which political leaning creates more happiness. Though it discusses the Pew Study that shows republicans as happier, it looks at arguments in both directions.
- Happiness and Religion: Happiness as Religion: This article from Psychology Today argues that religion increases happiness. As an example, it looks at reasearch that has shown that people with strong religious leanings have a higher survival rate following dangerous surgery, implying that these people have a stronger will to live.
- Religion and Happiness: This article looks at how religion can increase happiness. In particular, it makes the argument for how spirituality can be a positive force for happiness in one's life.