Chapter 16Which Adults Are Happier Than Others?
People differ hugely in their enjoyment of life. When asked
how satisfied people are with their life (on a scale 0– 10),
25% of BHPS respondents give a reply of 6 or under, 50% 7
or 8, and 25% 9 or 10.^7 So the first question is what explains
this variation and what can we do about it?
We first examine the effect of a person’s adult situation,
holding constant whatever went before in their life. The re-
sults are in the first column of Table 16.1. For each factor
they show its influence, when all the other factors are held
constant. In Table 16.1 we focus on all adults over 25, while
in Figure 1.1 we analyzed this issue only for people aged 34
and 42. The two sets of results are remarkably similar.
Once again we see the enormous importance of mental
health and of close personal relationships. Even though we
now include the elderly population, mental illness explains
more of the variation in happiness than physical illness
does. Income explains under 1% of the variation in happi-
ness (as measured by the square of the β- statistic).
However, one obvious question is: What explains the low-
est levels of happiness? Is it the same things, or is income for
example more important in explaining whether people are
really miserable? The second column of the table addresses
this question. Those “in misery” are those in the lowest 10%
or so of life- satisfaction, and the equation predicts whether
an individual is or is not in misery. Income is no better at
explaining who is in misery than at explaining overall life-
satisfaction. Mental health remains more important than
physical health. Similar findings hold in the United States,
Australia, and Germany.