The Origins of Happiness

The Origins of Happiness

Even at age 16 the influence of the primary school

is still nearly as strong as that of the child’s second-

ary school.

• Loneliness in old age. In later life a major problem is
  loneliness. Even controlling for whether they have a
  partner, people with an extra standard deviation of
  loneliness have a life- satisfaction that is lower by 0.5
  points.


• Social norms. Happiness is hugely affected by the
  ethos of a society, which affects everyone in it. For
  example, happiness is higher in societies where peo-
  ple trust each other. If those who trust others rises
  from 0% to 100%, happiness rises by 1 whole point.
  Freedom is also a crucial determinant of happiness.
  So no one who favors happiness should favor a to-
  talitarian state.

The Life- Course Approach

The evidence we present in this book comes mainly from

studying how people develop over their life course. Chapter

1 gave an outline of our approach, but it can usefully be

repeated in stylized form in the following graph. A child

grows up in a family and goes to school. These influences

(plus the genes) determine the child’s “outcomes” at 16.

The main dimensions here are the child’s intellectual, be-

havioral, and emotional development, and the emotional

dimension is our measure of the happiness of a child.

The child then grows into an adult, with many adult “out-

comes” (including income, employment, partnering, and

mental and physical health). At the same time the adult’s