A Dutch professor has recently published a paper indicating that people in Britain are 21st equal in their happiness ranking out of 90. Well above us are people in much less rich, less equal countries where there is less personal freedom.
I have written about this for The First Post website and I will put up a link to that article here when it is available. If that link becomes out of date, try here.
In researching the work of this professor, Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University in Rotterdam - the only Professor whose subject is happiness in the world it seems - I came across mention of a paper he wrote on how welfare states affect levels of happiness.
I don't think it is possible to access this paper in its entirety for free, but an abstract of it he states that there is no relationship between health and happiness and the existence of a large welfare state.
Of course I believe that he is wrong. I believe there is a negative correlation between a large welfare state and the health and happiness of a people. But it is perhaps doubly telling that a man who appears to have expected to show that a welfare state causes happiness has been obliged by the evidence not to make such a conclusion.
Here is the abstract:
The terms well-being and welfare are often bracketed together, especially well-being and state welfare. The level of well-being is believed to be higher in welfare states, and its distribution more equitable. This theory is tested here in a comparative study of 41 nations from 1980 to 1990. The size of state welfare is measured by social security expenditures. The well-being of citizens is measured in terms of the degree to which they lead healthy and happy lives.Contrary to expectation, there appears to be no link between the size of the welfare state and the level of well-being within it. In countries with generous social security schemes, people are not healthier or happier than in equally affluent countries where the state is less open-handed. Increases or reductions in social security expenditure are not related to a rise or fall in the level of health and happiness either.
There also appears to be no connection between the size of state welfare and equality in well-being among citizens of the state. In countries where social security expenditure is high, the dispersion of health and happiness is not smaller than in equally prosperous countries with less social insurance spending. Again, increases and reductions in social security expenditure are not linked with equality in health and happiness among citizens.
This counterintuitive result raises five questions: (1) Is this really true? (2) If so, what could explain this lack of effect? (3) Why is it so difficult to believe this result? (4) How should this information affect social policy? (5) What can we learn from further research?
This is an article about the professor's research.
This is the professor's own website about happiness.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General
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James,
Of course the welfare state does not make everyone happy, it is not supposed to is it! The role of the welfare state is to relieve certain kinds of practical discomfort and disadvantage, and that's all!
And, even though the welfare state's activities can often enable a little happiness for many, that is an incidental and in no way does it mean its activities should ever be distorted so as to try and always ensure such outcomes.
This is because happiness itself almost always traces down to close personal interelationships between individuals, and we surely all know perfectly well that effective practical relief in distress is generaly best brought about by more formal arrangements.
From that you should see that happiness in welfare terms is far more likely to be enabled and made through the good additional works of the private sector; through things like the genuine interest of friends and relatives, children's out of school clubs, hospital chaplains, and so forth. I do not know if the professor looked at those.
Posted by: Albert Dean at January 18, 2006 11:28 PM
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That's a very different take from the one heard on yesterday's PM programme on Radio 4. There they claimed that the unhappiness was caused by inequality and therefore the evils of capitalism.
Among the evidence cited for this was the higher incidences of mental illness in countries like Britain and the US - which seems to overlook the point that our victim culture is more inclined to root out a spurious psychological cause for everything. After all, is it really surprising that more New Yorkers see shrinks than Nigerians do?
Posted by: James Hellyer at January 10, 2006 11:23 AM