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The Happiness Index: The Search For Wellbeing
Episode 196 • 21st February 2022 • MSP [] MATTSPLAINED [] MSPx • KULTURPOP
00:00:00 00:28:52

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Richard Bradbury: It’s finally here. We’ve been talking about the apocalyptic Big Tech episode for the past few weeks. He relented for the good of our mental health in the lead up to Chinese New Year. But we’ve run out of road. There’s no more fun left in the armoire of edification that is Matt Armitage.

Matt Armitage:

• Are you happy?

Richard Bradbury: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• Isn’t strange how such a simple question makes you squirm?

• Admittedly, I’m asking a fellow Brit.

• We’d rather admit to a triple murder than say we’re happy.

• Which is my roundabout way of saying no, we’re not doing the depressing Big Tech story this week.

• Though I fear we will have to talk about next week.

• I want to talk about happiness. That thing we all aspire to.

• And the thing that so many of us think we’re failing to achieve.

• And that’s the thing about new year celebrations. We wish each other happiness and joy for the year to come.

• But often, finding that prosperity can be easier than finding sense of happiness and contentment.

• Especially so over the bizarreness of the past couple of years.

Richard Bradbury: Are you happy?

Matt Armitage:

• Of course not. I have to swim deep inside my bucket of personal miseries in order to bring these uplifting and enlightening shows to the world.

• But I’m selfless and humble enough to make that sacrifice.

Richard Bradbury: Is the idea to bring people down, so that they feel better simply because the show’s over?

Matt Armitage:

• That does sound like me, I’ll admit.

• But no. Actual science and research-based stuff about happiness.

• Admittedly we do something like this most years with an update on the science.

• We’ve skipped the last couple, for the obvious reason that so many people have been in survival mode.

• So there’s a couple of parts to this – we’ll look at some of the results and techniques that we can personally follow in the first part of the show.

• But in the second half I’d like to look at happiness measurements for society as a whole.

• And what measurements and policies help nations to feel content.

Richard Bradbury: Starting with the personal touch – how much of how happy we feel is dictated by genetics?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes, so this is one of those nature, nurture arguments.

• A lot of the information for today comes from a couple of NS articles, What makes people Happy and the Happiness Revolution, both by David Robson.

• Research seems to suggest that only about 30% of the variance in our happiness is inherited.

• So, it may be true to say that some people are born with a sunny and optimistic outlook.

• But we don’t really diverge from one another too much.

• So then, how much is environmental and how much depend on our life decisions?

• And how much of those two can be unpicked?

Richard Bradbury: You’re talking about things like profession, marriage, parenthood? That kind of decision?

Matt Armitage:

• Yeah. You’d expect the impact of what smartphone you choose to be quite short-lived.

• Although those of us baked inescapably into Apple’s orbit may be regretting some of our earlier cheerleading.

• But those decisions may matter less than you imagine. Marriage leads to a spike in wellbeing for a few years, but this tends to fade over time.

• Parenting is a mixed bag, too.

• A lot of research for years has shown that those without children tend to be happier than those with them.

• I can understand that – I get stressed enough about my cat.

• I can’t imagine how I’d feel about other humans that I had a genetic link to.

Richard Bradbury: “Other humans that you have a genetic link to?”

Matt Armitage:

• I’m in robot mode. But it seems that the reality is a lot more nuanced – often by those environmental factors.

• Those parental pressures seem to be most visible in countries like the US and the UK.

• Where social safety nets are relatively sparse and less evenly applied.

• There is much less of a gap in European countries with wider social safety nets.

• Factors like parental leave, shorter or more flexible working hours, paid holiday, and affordable childcare.

• To the point that in countries like Spain, France, Sweden, Finland, the reverse is the case.

• If I lived in Finland, I might actually be sad that I don’t have kids.

Richard Bradbury: You really want to live in Finland, don’t you?

Matt Armitage:

• I really do. Finland or Iceland. And it’s not because Finland tops the lists for the world’s happiest country.

• I just want to be cold for most of the year.

• I’m like an overclocked processor living on borrowed time.

• Extreme cooling could extend my lifespan.

• But how those family dynamics play out can also affect subsequent generations, so there’s that possibility of a cascading effect – whether positive or negative.

Richard Bradbury: So far these are mostly regulatory or inherited characteristics. What about the more holistic side – do medical advances have the potential to make us happy?

Matt Armitage:

• Obviously, there are a lot of treatments for conditions like anxiety and depression in development.

• We’ve talked about testing with certain classes of drugs, which, combined with talk therapy,

• Are helping patients to decouple the memory of trauma and its emotional component.

• Those tests are showing promise for PTSD sufferers.

• Last week we talked about bacteriophages that could hold the key to treating some forms of depression,

• as well as predispositions to conditions like obesity.

• These are mental health interventions.

• They’re treating conditions that may be blocking people from leading happy or at least happier lives.

• Despite the popularity of the phrase – there is no happy pill.

• And why would there be: our lives, our genetics, our environments all differ.

Richard Bradbury: So, we’re talking more along the lines of psychological advances?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. There are the obvious physical things. Eat well. Exercise. Pursue your vices in moderation.

• Get more sleep, or at least better-quality sleep. That’s probably my least favourite advice– it’s like people telling you to relax.

• The kind of people who slip off into a peaceful slumber really have no idea what it is to lie there turning over for hours.

• Just like telling someone who is tense to relax: they’re going to become even more tightly wound.

• Which is why those psychological approaches – in changing mindsets and habits – can be so useful.

• A lot of them are well known. Approaches like mindfulness and meditation aren’t new.

• But continuing research into them is giving us more insight into how they work.

Richard Bradbury: Does the mechanism really matter if we know that the results are successful?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes and no. There are all kinds of things in medicine that we know work but not really why.

• Firstly, scientists and doctors don’t really like flying blind.

• Science really is just knowledge, after all.

• Having that better understanding also helps us to make those interventions and programmes more effective.

• If we go back to last week’s episode – to use that analogy with antibiotics and bacteriophages.

• A bacteriophage works on a specific infection – a broad spectrum antibiotic takes out a whole range of infections.

• But that involves introducing the body to a whole load of antibodies that it may not need,

• which is concerning given that more bugs, as well as our own bodies are becoming resistant to many antibiotics.

Richard Bradbury: Are we likely to become resistant to treatments like mindfulness?

Matt Armitage:

• I know it’s an odd analogy. Let me give you an example.

• Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist at Yale University.

• She runs a free course on the remote learning platform Coursera called The Science of Well-Being.

• Which outlines a lot of the current science and learning about the mental habits that damage our happiness, to quote NS.

• It seems to be pretty well reviewed and it’s also a way that Santos and her team get feedback on how well the techniques work for people.

• I have signed up for it – in the spirit of research.

• I have to admit these past few weeks of positive episodes are weighing heavily on me.

• My happiness is generally linked to the amount of negativity I spread, which we’ll get to after the break.

lleagues published a paper in:

Richard Bradbury: With the expectation that both groups would improve their overall well-being?

Matt Armitage:

• The key was to compare and contrast those improvements.

• And it turned out that the well-being course, with its orientation towards application rather than simply outlining the scientific approach…

• Resulted In respondents reporting gains about double those of the psychology course.

• Which, NS points out, also dovetails with a similar study carried out on students of a course in the UK run by the charity Action for Happiness.

• Where they found that well-being compared while taking the course and continued for a couple of months after.

Richard Bradbury: Why might those gains typically last only a couple of months?

Matt Armitage:

• This goes back to that question about becoming resistant.

• As we mentioned, many spikes in our well-being tend to be temporary.

• And we’ll get into some of those wider societal factors after the break.

• One reason can be becoming too focused on the methodologies and their anticipated results.

• That balance between the techniques – the practice mindfulness or keeping things like gratitude journals.

• Becoming their own block that simply adds too much pressure into your day.

• And, like looking at someone’s Instagram photos, it can give you an idealized or unrealistic version of what your life should be.

• So, go easy on yourself.

Richard Bradbury: When we come back: looking for the perfect Happiness Index

BREAK

Richard Bradbury: How do you boost the well-being of a country? It’s hard enough to make those gains on an individual level. So, how do we focus on them at a national level?

Matt Armitage:

• We already spoke about the parental gap disparity, that it seems less pronounced in countries that have more effective social infrastructure for parents.

• One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because it becomes much more of a business issue at a national level.

• You might expect that countries with growing GDP levels would be those with the happiest populations.

• Because GDP is often used as a marker for welfare – if more money is being earned per capita, the expectation is that we should be living better and happier lives.

• We can afford more of the stuff that makes lives easier. Better housing, transport, medical support, education.

• But increasingly we’re seeing countries trying to separate these economic and quality of life proxies.

• And to introduce more diverse and dynamic tools to assess happiness.

Richard Bradbury: What evidence is there that GDP shouldn’t be used in this way?

Matt Armitage:

The benchmark for this is the:

• It’s a study commissioned by the UN which has been published since 2012.

• Firstly, many of the countries that top the chart have fairly flat GDP growth.

• Suggesting that national satisfaction isn’t necessarily linked to economic growth.

• In fact, over the pandemic many of those at the top of the list have experienced negative GDP growth.

• The second is the long-overlooked work of an economist, Richard Easterlin.

• In:

• This is the period that was supposedly a Golden Age for the US economy and the prosperity of its citizens.

• As well as being the foundation of the American Dream.

• But despite that rising GDP, life satisfaction scores remained fairly flat across the whole of society.

Richard Bradbury: So there were groups that did score their well-being throughout?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes, unsurprisingly richer people tended to be happier than poorer ones.

• So you could interpret that overall flat score as an indicator of those economic gains being spread unevenly.

• In any case, no one took much notice at the time, and GDP continued to be used as that well-being proxy.

taken more seriously from the:

• And Easterlin, who is in his late 90s, is still working and publishing in the field.

• In:

• Japan between 1958 and 1987,

• China between:

• India between 2006 and 2018.

• Quoted by Robson in NS, Easterlin stated that in all the countries analysed there were periods where income doubled and redoubled.

• And there was no net gain in happiness.

• He also notes happiness in India has declined as income has grown.

Richard Bradbury: What are some of the tools that governments are using to augment or replace GDP calculations to estimate well-being?

Matt Armitage:

• There’s a whole bunch. We mentioned that UN World Happiness Report.

• That surveys individuals using a tool known as a Cantril ladder, which is really straight forward.

• It asks you to imagine that your life is a ladder with ten rungs.

• The tenth rung is the best life you could lead, the first is the worst.

• And you score your life inbetween.

• Out of interest - What would your life score be?

Richard Bradbury: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• I’m a solid 3 after the last few positive shows but I do hope to get back on track.

• There’s another UN model, the Human Development Index, which incorporates life expectancy and education alongside those economic results.

• But it’s not strictly a well-being measure.

• The OECD’s Better Life Index is more direct – it uses 11 points to measure quality of life.

• I won’t list them all – but they also include aspects like democracy and work-life balance in addition to the usual suspects like health, education and so on.

• And then there is the Happy Planet Index, which has been developed by a thinktank in the UK called the New Economics Foundation.

• Which includes many of the well-being and health measurements and balances them alongside environmental and ecological concerns.

Richard Bradbury: Are there any that are emerging as a new kind of standard?

Matt Armitage:

• Well, the Human Development Index is pretty mainstream, but as I said not really a wellbeing measurement as such.

• The Gross National Happiness Index seems to be one of the front runners.

• It assesses factors like cultural and ecological diversity and resilience, good governance and community vitality alongside the markers you would expect.

• It was pioneered by Bhutan, which has eschewed the use of GDP calculations as a marker of national development and progress for decades.

• Gross National Happiness has been used in various forms in countries around the world, although usually at the local or state level, rather than nationally.

• Companies have also adapted and adopted the GNH, as it’s known.

• But perhaps the most enthusiastic adopter has been New Zealand which announced in,

• I think:

Richard Bradbury: This is a show about happiness. Why are we talking about economics?

Matt Armitage:

• I know. It does feel like we’re trying to commodify happiness.

• But in a sense you have to objectify it at that national level.

• And it is an economic argument: as we mentioned before, with rising GDP it was felt that people’s lives should be better.

• That people should feel happier. And as we’ve demonstrated, in many instances they don’t.

Richard Bradbury: So, it this an argument about public spending?

Matt Armitage:

• Partly, but it really is more about people.

• Many of the countries that rank high on the World Happiness Index are countries that have very high taxation.

• Which we’re often told is the route to ruin.

• And as a result, those countries have quite interventionist governments and high levels of public spending.

• But that only tells part of the picture – which is why many of those happiness calculators also include good governance indicators.

• A country may spend a lot on health or social programmes but it doesn’t mean that the money is well spent.

• There may be leakages or corruption in the system – so the efficiency of that spending is key.

• Are you spending on prevention or cure in your health spending, for instance?

• Do you see higher education as a national resource or a personal responsibility?

• That’s why you can’t run away from economics, but so much other information is key to determining national happiness.

Richard Bradbury: I guess part of this is also about how we see ourselves within and as part of our society…

Matt Armitage:

• One of the parts of this that a lot of people don’t like – and I’m not advocating any particular approach here –

• But that Easterlin paradox we talked about before: wellbeing either stagnant or declining as GDP grows.

London School of Economics in:

• Where they looked at Easterlin’s original data and compared it with measures of inequality across the same time period.

• And they noticed that they closely tracked one another: when inequality between the richest and poorest parts of society grew, levels of national wellbeing fell.

• Which will be interesting to see in a few years time: over the pandemic, many of those in the highest income brackets have seen unprecedented rises in their wealth.

• While we know that millions of other people have struggled to make ends meet, and we’re seeing rising levels of anger and resentment.

• Being directed at companies and political figures and that erosion of trust in public institutions.

Richard Bradbury: So, it’s certainly not as simple, as tax more and people will be happy?

Matt Armitage:

• Definitely not. Some high tax nations also have low levels of public happiness.

• What we’re really talking about is social capital – how you feel about your place in society.

• Part of that is about money and inequality – that’s inescapable.

• But how do you feel about the place you live in and the people that surround you?

• Do you feel that those people have your back, or do you feel like you’re on your own?

Another example from NS: a:

• Estimated that a lack of social connection or cohesion could be as harmful to your health as being obese or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

• And we tend to see, the more inequality grows, the more pressure is exerted on those social bonds.

Richard Bradbury: Are there other ways that economic growth can erode social capital and wellbeing?

Matt Armitage:

• Lots of ways. For example, if you’re working more and you spend less time with your friends and family.

• It doesn’t matter if that’s at your own direction or because your workplace pressures you to put in more hours.

• We’ve seen that push back in recent years with legislation to prevent bosses from contacting employees outside of working hours.

• Rapid economic growth can lead to haphazard urban planning.

• People move to cities or relocate within them, into residential blocks that may not have the requisite social infrastructure.

• Public transport links, retail opportunities, food, green and communal spaces, access to public services.

• And it becomes the norm to travel beyond where you live to meet your basic needs.

• So those community and social bonds don’t form.

Richard Bradbury: Which brings us back to the Finns…

Matt Armitage:

• So Finland and the Scandinavian countries share a lot of traits.

• Inequality rates are low, their governments are relatively efficient, and their system of social safety nets is strong.

• And part of having those strong social systems and those low inequality rates is that there are high levels of social trust.

• Which economists have described in terms of a virtuous cycle.

• Each one reinforces the other.

• Obviously, you can’t simply take a model and replicate it.

• Societies are much more complex than that and it can take literal generations to create those lasting effects.

• And there is an argument that it could push politicians to pursue more short-term and populist policies and pass on the costs to whoever comes next.

• Which could then erode those gains in the longer term.

• But, that said, it does look like happiness, as a policy priority, is here to stay.

• And I’ll have my Finnish visa now please…

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