American Dream Revisited

The pursuit of happiness is an American “birthright” and should be at the center of American policy, argues Professor Arthur C. Brooks in his new book, Gross National Happiness.

Drawn from international data, studies, and the General Social Survey (GSS),Brooks attempts to show that mainstream family values and morality cause Americans happiness. “I am confident in the findings in this book because multiple data sources told more or less the same story,” writes the Syracuse University professor.

“The lesson in every chapter of this book is that our gross national happiness depends on the way we teach and live our values. These values are faith, family, freedom, nonmaterialism, opportunity, hard work, and charity,” writes Brooks. “These values make up the ecosystem of happiness in America.”

And America is still exceptional in its long-lasting levels of happiness. According to the 2002 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data, included in the appendix, American happiness ranks 5 out of the 34 countries studied, with 56% of its citizens considering themselves “completely” or “very” happy. Each European country surveyed fell behind American happiness levels, including Great Britain (48%), the Netherlands (36%), and France (35%).

One reason Europeans may be less happy is the lack of personal autonomy reinforced by rigid European employment laws—a program designed to increase job security but resulting in a stale, dissatisfied workforce. “In fact, the evidence suggests that most of Europe is in a vicious cycle of low job satisfaction and rigid labor markets,” Brooks writes. “Across Europe, job security is significantly higher than in America: It is hard to lay off workers or even fire people for just cause…it has in fact led to a real scarcity of employment.”

Gross National Happiness is surprisingly accessible, combining a personal tone with extensive research. While each chapter contains copious footnotes and access to behavioral research, Brook effortlessly hides the statistics under a philosophical—and sometimes personal—narrative. “For most of my life, I didn’t question the elite wisdom about happy liberals and unhappy conservatives…In my [academic] world, we all just knew liberals were happiest,” writes Brooks.

Later, Brooks speaks of his own family. “My middle son, Carlos, was The Biter for about a year…My wife and I stressed and worried. We bought books. We argued. We talked to professionals. We lost sleep.”

Contrary to criticism, Brooks maintains that his book is not a political stunt to advocate for conservative causes. “Second, the happiness differences reported here do not say that conservatives are in any way better than liberals, righter than liberals, or even that they deserve to be happier,” he writes (emphasis original). “I make no claim that the right wing merits its relative happiness. You can be the judge of that.”

In fact, Brooks abhors political extremism. “But as for political extremism, both the Left and the Right must admit that it lowers our quality of life. The rhetoric on both the far left and far right makes the rest of us unhappier,” writes the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Fellow.

This does not, however, keep Brooks from advocating for children despite their happiness-reducing effect of a whopping -7%. (Believing in “abortion on demand” reduced one’s chances of happiness by 9%).

After establishing that even one child can reduce a parent’s happiness and that mothers have reported child-rearing as one of their least favorite activities, Brooks nonetheless maintains that children is part of “happy lifestyle.” He writes,

“Ponder this: 52 percent of married, religious, conservative people
with kids are very happy—versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal
people without kids. Kids are part of a happy lifestyle.”

Less than ten pages earlier Brooks writes, “If two adults in 2004 were the same age, sex, income, marital status, education, race, religion, and politics—but one had kids and the other did not—the parent would be 7 percentage points less likely to report being very happy.” Insisting that children are part of a “happy lifestyle,” Brooks contradicts his own evidence to win a philosophical argument.

If there is one area that Brooks remains uniformly conservative, it is on the issue of limited government. “In order to make up for the unhappiness caused by $1 in extra government revenue per citizen, each person would need an average of $12 in extra income,” he writes. He considers limited government a key policy goal. “We know that anything that strips away our sense of control will lower our happiness. Government, as important as it is, has inherent happiness-lowering tendencies.”

The author condemns welfare as a particularly heinous policy because it increases recipients’ chances of feeling “inconsolably sad” by 16 percentage points. “No other single factor—not income, age, education, or anything else—comes close to predicting this much of one’s unhappiness,” he writes.

By looking at individual-level responses, Brooks was able to analyze the relative influence that behavior had on happiness. Below is a chart,
based on his data, which shows how much a particular behavior affects an
American’s chances of happiness.

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.