6 Votes
US State Happiness Studied
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A recent study has been conducted by UK’s University of Warwick and Hamilton College in the US to determine how subjective, self reported happiness levels across US states correlate with objective factors such as congestion and air quality across the US’s 50 states.
The study also ranked the states by the correlated subjective/objective happiness levels. Several states in the top ten, namely Louisiana (#1), Mississippi and Alabama have caused many a raised eye-brow. And New Yorkers are none too pleased with their dead last ranking. Several commentators have noted a possible relation between level of education and lack of happiness. Which, of course, is sort of refuted by another study that says education increases happiness.
Perhaps ignorance truly is bliss.
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This article was edited after publication by the author on 07 Jan 2010.
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Life Satisfaction by JyroBritanniac
People’s happiness answers are true, you might say. This suggests that life-satisfaction survey data might be tremendously useful for governments to use in the design of economic and social policies.” said Oswald.
I would love to see this happen, but it appears to me that elected officials do not always do what their constituents want.
The second link you posted I found very interesting. The study was on anger, not on happiness. The study found that anger increases with children, among other things. It makes me wonder why people even bother to have kids then. Is it some sort of duty which drives them, is the the illusion of happiness, what is it? This may not be the direction you wanted your article to go, but it is what sparked my curiosity.
Upon introspection I would have to say that I do experience more anger now that I have a kid, but I also experience more love. It is also a different kind of love that I experience with my son. I guess if anger plays a major role in your life, then according to that study, there is no logical reason for your to have kids, because kids increase anger. Why do you have/do not have children?
Bitter Intelligence by gnifyus
Several commentators have noted a possible relation between level of education and lack of happiness.
This is reminding me of a Dostoevsky quote:
And so I wonder if many otherwise intelligent people feel a lack of purpose, direction and sense of self in today’s society? I seem to remember, (but can’t find it), that Dostoevsky went on to say that often people who are somewhat intelligent and well educated are not happy because they understand what they never seem to be able to achieve. It’s the ‘fat, dumb and happy’ who corner the market on that happiness because they have no preconceived aspirations to do anything “substantial” with their lives.
Wait a minute – I feel I’m pretty happy; where does that leave me?
Hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.. by gnifyus
.. because it feels so good when you stop.
This is what I equate life in the Northeast to consist of as far as relating mood swings to the weather. In the winter, (especially in Jan and Feb), I enter an odd sort of depression due to the lack of light, the cold, the cabin fever, etc. (And then you have to shovel.)
Why do we like it here? — Because it’s so happy and great when Spring comes around!
I'm not sure the researchers' excitement is warranted. by scottb
In the article, they make it sound like they’re so excited about having completely validated the correlation between self-reported happiness and objective measures. But the graph shows R = 0.6 — meaning that the claimed relationship accounts for only about 60% of the variability in the data.
So, there’s one or more other factors involved that, together, are nearly as strong as the objective measures at predicting self-reported happiness levels.
The other thing that bothers me, here, is that the y-coordinates of the points on the graph are misleading. What’s plotted is the average happiness score reported for that state — but is the variance among happiness scores similar among states?
That variance implicitly “smears” those points vertically — the higher the state’s variance, the longer the “smear”, which further damages the degree to which the linear relationship connects the variables.
Why don’t these articles give us links to the actual studies?
It's a miracle by Occams
I am feeling very positive about having children today. My first grandchild was born early this morning, and I have just come from seeing her in the hospital.
Sometimes there are no problems or complications and it is the most wonderful, joyful and happy time for everyone involved. No concerns here about inflicting another child on the world.