Gwern has an excellent essay on how everything is correlated, and very rarely does the correlation imply causation. I was reminded of that essay when I read this tweet:
In addition to male and female happiness since the Sexual Revolution, those graph also show male and female happiness . . .
1. over 50 years of economic growth
2. since Nixon’s War on Drugs was initiated
3. since abortion was legalized
4. since divorce laws were liberalized
5. during a period of increasing civil rights for women, blacks and gays
6. during a period where computers increasingly dominated our lives
7. during a period where families became smaller
8. since the creation of the EPA and OSHA
9. during a period where our politics became increasingly polarized
So why does Ross Douthat single out the Sexual Revolution? Is it because he doesn’t like the Sexual Revolution, for reasons essentially unrelated to this happiness survey?
I don’t happen to believe the reported happiness data tells us much of anything about the actual happiness experienced by humans. If asked how happy I was, I wouldn’t even know how to answer the question. Compared to what? I have no idea how happy other people are, and hence have no “baseline” to give a zero to 10 rating for myself. Perhaps modern media outlets present an increasingly dazzling image of the good life experienced by the rich and famous, making people who are just as happy as in 1970 rate their well being lower than they would have 50 years ago. Almost anything is possible.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that reported happiness does tell us something meaningful. Most of those nine listed factors obviously had little impact on reported happiness. Is there a “story” where the Sexual Revolution could explain these changes? Sure, there are lots of stories. Some have argued that the Sexual Revolution helped attractive men at the expense of women, which might explain the bigger decline in reported female happiness. But two points are worth noting. First, male happiness also declined. Second, male happiness now equals female happiness. Is that a good thing? Again, I don’t trust the data. But if it is to be taken seriously, has the Sexual Revolution given us gender equality?
It might seem bizarre to claim that economic growth made us less happy. Don’t people enjoy having more goods and services? Yes, but couldn’t the same be said about sex? The argument that the Sexual Revolution reduced happiness obviously needs some nuance, some indirect effects.
While there are plausible stories about how the Sexual Revolution might have made us less happy, I could just as easily invent stories where economic growth made us less happy. Much of our recent economic growth has been driven by the computer revolution. Perhaps we used to socialize in bowling leagues, and now we sit at home all alone and use social media to obsess over how other people have more friends and better vacations than we do. Note that the Sexual Revolution was at its peak around 1980, whereas male and female happiness took a big drop after the early 2000s, just as social media was ramping up
Would Tyler Cowen have retweeted a tweet indicating that happiness was declining as computer use increased?
Do I believe that economic growth makes us less happy? Not really, or at least I’m agnostic on the issue. Just as I don’t believe any other explanation for why we are less happy. Indeed, I don’t even believe that we are less happy.
Ironically, I often play the contrarian in the opposite direction, claiming that economic growth has not boosted happiness and justifying that belief by pointing to the fact that people don’t seem any happier than when I was young. But they also don’t seem less happy than before. When it comes to happiness, agnosticism seems like the most sensible attitude.
PS. Elsewhere I’ve argued that classical liberalism is the system that maximizes human happiness. Since 1970, we’ve liberalized in some directions (gay rights, marijuana) and gone backward in others (the TSA, tobacco). Net change? Hard to say. Are we happier? Hard to say. Are we less happy? Hard to say.
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Aug 25 2023 at 7:01pm
At first I looked at that graph on the left and thought it looked about right. Nice steady rise from about the mid-70s, brief dip in the early 90s (Jr. High, ugh!), but they missed the huge increase in happiness from the mid 90s through the middle of the oughts, and then the even bigger increase from say 2017 until the present…it’s like the researchers didn’t even think to ask me for my opinion…
Marcus Decius Cornelious
Aug 26 2023 at 12:09am
Don’t forgot the leaving the gold standard…..
John
Aug 26 2023 at 12:36am
Is it possible that he’s not saying that the sexual revolution caused decrease in happiness, but rather that it failed to increase happiness? That’s what I thought when I saw it. You often see a narratives in pop culture and elsewhere that 1950s/60s sexual mores and gender roles were stifling and oppressive (particularly for women) and then the sexual liberation helped people (women in particular) feel more liberated and fulfilled. This would be counter to that narrative (I’m thinking of shows like Mad Men, or movies like Pleasantville, or the general distaste for those cultural mores by progressives).
Scott Sumner
Aug 26 2023 at 1:17am
That’s possible, but I’m pretty sure he’s implying a negative relationship.
steve
Aug 26 2023 at 1:05pm
I am generally suspicious of happiness surveys. Happiness is pretty subjective. People can be happy when by any objective measure their lives are pretty crappy. They can be unhappy when by objective measures their lives are pretty good. So I think a lot of this depends upon how they ask the questions and try to sort out causes, which is hard to do. As a result I think it is pretty easy to believe the happiness surveys that support what I believe and ignore those I dont. I dont think I am alone in that behavior which I do try to monitor.
Steve
Rafael
Aug 28 2023 at 11:40am
There’s that world happiness survey that gets into the news every few years. It used to give Caribbean and Latin American countries as the happiest in the world but that’s not the answer they were looking for so they changed the methodology and now they get Nordic countries at the top year after year which is absolutely hilarious.
There’s no way you can convince me that living in dark freezing climate the majority of the year will make you happier than warm breezy beaches
MarkW
Aug 26 2023 at 1:05pm
Since 1970, we’ve liberalized in some directions (gay rights, marijuana) and gone backward in others (the TSA, tobacco). Net change? Hard to say. Are we happier? Hard to say. Are we less happy? Hard to say.
I don’t have a good sense of whether or not people are happier now, but I do think that people now are much less bored than when I was a youngster. Especially kids. I’m not entirely sure it’s a good thing, but I think of the difference of riding in the back of a car on a family trip with vs without electronics. Perhaps the boredom and squabbling with siblings was in some way character-building, but the boredom was real. Similarly, we were free-range during the summer in my neighborhood, so we had a lot more freedom, but we were also collectively bored at lot more than today’s kids. Not only were we allowed to go out and play, we were often required to, as one mom after another kicked us all out of her cool basement and back out into the afternoon sun.
What’s the relationship between boredom levels and overall happiness?
Scott Sumner
Aug 26 2023 at 1:17pm
Hard to say. Life is full of hedonic set points.
Jim Glass
Aug 26 2023 at 3:58pm
everything is correlated, and very rarely does the correlation imply causation.
What??!!
nobody.really
Aug 28 2023 at 4:02pm
I’ve heard that the French Revolution was not driven by oppressive circumstances–because, indeed, circumstances had grown less oppressive prior to the revolution. Rather, the revolution was driven by expectations that were rising faster than circumstances were improving.
This supports my suspicion that “happiness” tends to measure the extent to which a person’s experiences correspond to expectations.
For much of history, women could aspire to a narrow range of social roles–the most common being wife and mother. Most women achieved that status, and so most could report having fulfilled those expectations. Post-WWII blue-collar men white men could achieve a union job with benefits and a salary sufficient to buy a house in Levittown. And generally, people harbored a subconscious belief in social class. No, I don’t mean that they acknowledge such a belief. But when asked on a survey, “Are you one of the most important people in the world?”, few said “Yes,” and few applied for admission to Harvard.
Today people are aware of a greater range of possibilities, aspire to those possibilities–and mostly fail to achieve those aspirations. Harvard has become more exclusive because ever more people apply–the vast majority of whom never had a realistic chance for admission anyway.
Humans are social animals and will be inclined to compare themselves to others. The primary method to minimize such comparisons is to maintain social boundaries–based on gender, race, class, occupation, etc. We have done much to transcend these boundaries, which has had many salutary consequences–but has also had he consequence of making it harder for people to predict their life’s trajectory.
If the goal were to increase the share of the public who become millionaires, we’ve succeeded. If the goal were to increase the percentage of people who aspire to become millionaires to achieve their aspiration, we’ve failed; the denominator rises faster than the numerator. This helps explain the appeal of Donald Trump–a man who achieved renown by channeling the frustrations of one of the most affluent populations in history.
The secret to a happy marriage is … low expectations. It’s a joke. And it’s not.
Jim Glass
Aug 30 2023 at 1:15am
Your are correct about everything, sir.
Economics has nothing to do with happiness. It is about increasing welfare, which is a very different thing. (Though the naive repeatedly insist it shouldn’t be.) The other social sciences often complain about economists acting like imperialists invading and taking over their fields. They are right about this one, “happiness” studies should be left to the psychologists. Who are doing some pretty good work on it, especially the evolutionary psychologists.
It’s pretty dang certain that our economic progress and wealth hasn’t made us any happier today than our distant ancestors were. Why wouldn’t the proverbial cave man waking up on a nice day with his mate be happy about things? And if all the comparative wealth and welfare we’ve built up since then had steadily made us happier, we’d be dancing on clouds for joy. That’s not what happiness is about. Evolution created happiness along with all the other emotions, and they are about directing what we do.
Evolution doesn’t give a rat’s derriere if we are happy (or anxious, angry, depressed…) but it does care if these emotions direct our actions to increase our chances of spawning the next generation. Victor Frankl reported from the Nazi concentration camps that prisoners who could have a happy day and had a sense of humor, told jokes, had the greatest chance of survival. (Though they didn’t have a lot of economic resources.)
There is a question about whether the happiness mechanisms developed by evolution over 299,700 years still fit for today or have become maladaptive. One big example is “negativity bias” that is all around us, making so many so unreasonably unhappy. To be afraid of danger everywhere and that everything could fall apart at any moment fueled healthy caution when that was all true. Now it can be outright destructive in our reverse world. Yet people aren’t even aware it exists. Steven Pinker tells how when he explains that the Flynn Effect has increased IQ by ~30 points over the last 100 years he gets guffaws, “Then we’d all be geniuses!” To which he replies: “Do we fly our families through the air to Disney World like Greek gods — though the gods didn’t have WiFi?” You put great good news right in peoples’ faces they don’t see it, or outright reject it, get angry. Instead of being happy! That doesn’t make sense any more.
The same thing happens with much more serious topics. People strive and labor to achieve something, succeed, then look at it and go “eh, not worth it” and throw it away. Nations do as well. Look at the ideologies being taught on our college campuses now. Hedonic adaption, built into our genes.
I’m way digressing. Point is, “happiness studies” is real and significant. For psychologists, evolutionary scientists, and maybe political thinkers. But not for economics. Leave it to the pros.
TGGP
Aug 30 2023 at 11:48pm
One notable factor you left out relevant for male vs female happiness: a lot of women entered the workforce over that time period. Perhaps then we should not be surprised that female happiness came to resemble males, who started out with the norm of needing to work.
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