TheEconomistJuly 13th 2019 551“H
appy?” splutters a middle-aged
man at a polling station in central
London, when asked about his feelings on
voting in a recent European election. “I’d be
happy if I could kick all the bastards out.”
He is not with the programme. In 1972
the king of Bhutan decided his country
would adopt gross national happiness as a
goal. At the time it seemed eccentric. But
over the past decade, politicians in democ-
racies have started to pay more attention to
the idea that they should give priority to
the well-being of their citizens. Thomas
Jefferson argued that “the happiness of ev-
ery individual [is] now acknowledged to
be...the only legitimate object of govern-
ment”. That view is now mainstream.
In 2008 the French government set up
the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission to
create new national accounts which go be-
yond gdp and reflect things like the quality
of life and the state of the environment.
Two years later Britain’s prime minister,
David Cameron, set up a “well-being index”to measure Britain’s happiness and social
progress. And this year New Zealand pro-
duced the world’s first “well-being budget”
in which health and life satisfaction—not
wealth or economic growth—would guide
some public-spending choices. In practice,
this has meant more money to combat
child poverty, domestic abuse and mental
health problems.
Happiness matters not only in its own
right but also because it influences wheth-
er politicians get elected. In 2017 a study by
Federica Liberini of ethZurich, a universi-
ty, showed that voters in Britain who said
they were highly satisfied with their lives
were 1.6% more likely to support the party
in power. That may not sound like much,
but she found that a 10% rise in family in-
come was associated with a mere 0.18% in-
crease in support for incumbents. In other
words, well-being (or happiness) seems
more important to the outcome of elec-
tions than money.
A recent study by George Ward of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology
confirmed the political significance of
happiness. He looked at what best explains
the variation in the incumbents’ share of
the vote in 15 European elections between
1973 and 2014. Life satisfaction, he found,
was twice as important in explaining how
incumbents did as the unemployment rate
and about 30% more important than gdp
growth. Mr Ward also found that, in these
15 elections, almost half of those who were
very satisfied with their lives said they
would vote for the incumbent while less
than a third of those who were not at all sat-
isfied would. Research from America sug-
gests that happiness has as big an effect on
voting patterns there as education.Clap along if you feel
All this suggests that happiness is the main
determinant of whether a government gets
re-elected, more important than jobs or
wages. Make voters happier and you will
get back in. Fail to do so and you will be
booted out. But a question arises: how do
you explain what is happening in Europe?
In almost every European country, par-
ties angry with the status quo have in-
creased their share of the vote over the past
decade or so. The populist right has got into
power (usually in coalitions) in Italy, Po-
land, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Finland
and Estonia. Britain voted to leave the
European Union and, at recent elections toHappiness and electionsThe satisfaction paradox
Why are seemingly contented people voting for angry parties?International