The Origins of Happiness

The Origins of Happiness

A natural tendency of skeptics is to say “But isn’t mental

illness caused by poverty or unemployment?” Some of it is.

But the equation in the table explicitly measures the im-

pact of that mental illness that is not caused by poverty or

unemployment. And in any case we have previously shown

that most mental illness is in fact not the result of poverty

or unemployment.

The Absolute Effects of Experience

As we have said, it is one thing to look at explanatory power

and another to show how changing a situation would im-

prove happiness. That is the subject of Table 16.2. It shows

how life- satisfaction (0– 10) increases as a result of various

changes. The scores recorded are points on the scale 0 to 10.

Table 16.1. What explains the variation of life- satisfaction and of mis-

ery among adults (BHPS) (cross- section) (β- coefficients)

Life- satisfaction Misery

Income 0.09 −0.07

Education (years) 0.02 −0.02

Not unemployed 0.06 −0.07

Noncriminality 0.06 −0.04

Partnered 0.11 −0.08

Physical health (no. of conditions) 0.11 −0.09

Mental health (diagnosed depression/
anxiety)

0.19 −0.16

R^2 0.19 0.14