More money, more problems

THE NEW BRITISH documentary ‘‘49 Up,’’ the latest update on the fates of a dozen people the filmmaker Michael Apted has been following since the age of 7, offers fresh evidence that the wellsprings of human happiness are, indeed, mysterious. Apted clearly intended his films to be explorations of the British class system—and, yes, the pampered 7-year-olds do turn out to be the most privileged 49-year-olds. But class doesn’t correlate with happiness nearly as much as the director thought it would.

The working-class interviewees (a baggage-handler at Heathrow, for example) shrug off Apted’s pointed questions about regrets—Do you wish you’d had a more significant career?—and express, for the most part, contentment. One comes away thinking it’s decent marriages and grandkids that make you happy, while sundered relationships leave scars, whatever your bank balance.

Several economic studies affirm that the correlation of income and happiness is nowhere near what people think. One finds that in developed societies there is slightly more happiness at the 75th percentile of income than at the 50th, but that above the 75th percentile more money doesn’t matter. And average levels of happiness in various societies are even less closely tied to national wealth: Four times more Danes than French citizens, for example, say they are ‘‘very satisfied’’ with their lives, although the two countries are similarly prosperous.

Oxford economic historian Avner Offer, in his new book ‘‘The Challenge of Affluence’’ (Oxford), makes the latest attempt to shift the discussion of national well-being away from talk of GDP per capita. ‘‘Economic growth is just a statistical artifact,’’ he says in an interview; to focus solely on growth is to miss much of what’s important in life. But while he draws on the studies mentioned above, he goes a step further. The richest societies, he says, particularly America and Britain, have reached a point at which their wealth and growth are actually harming citizens’ health and quality of life.

In making his case, Offer leaps into a debate among economists over to what degree consumers can be trusted to make decisions in their long-term best interests. One influential camp says that a consumer’s actions by definition express her desires and that to second-guess those decisions is to second-guess freedom itself. Offer, though, sides with those who say consumers are systematically shortsighted: Given temptation, they will substitute short-term pleasure for long-term welfare. And affluent societies provide a lot more temptation.

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In general, the affluent people in any given society do a better job of making decisions that pay off in the long run: investing more time in school, eating less junk food, watching less TV, saving more. Offer accepts this. But he adds that what’s true of individuals isn’t true of societies: The faster a nation grows, the faster it throws fresh temptations at people.

Temptation, as Offer sees it, can take the form of everything from TV and video games luring high-school students away from their studies to the latest plasma TVs persuading families to spend rather than save. (The American personal savings rate is now around zero.) And citizens of affluent societies, whether they’re rich or poor, don’t have the time either to develop new mores or public policies to deal with the new temptations.

Consider obesity. In the United States, two-thirds of men, and nearly as many women, are now overweight. The single biggest factor, according to the studies Offer cites, is the proliferation of restaurants with cheap, large portions at the same time that consumers have gained more spending power.

Is it paternalistic to second-guess the decision to eat often—and a lot—at Applebee’s? Offer doesn’t think so. The decision is objectively harmful to happiness. Overweight people regret their condition, go on fewer dates, and die early—one reason the United States has a life expectancy comparable to Costa Rica’s. Publicizing the nutritional content of items on restaurant menus would be one partial fix to the problem, although Offer largely shies from public-policy suggestions. ‘‘What I propose is to diagnose the problem,’’ he says.

Of course, Offer isn’t the first to make this diagnosis. The book’s title even echoes that of the late John Kenneth Galbraith’s ‘‘The Affluent Society’’ (1958), which argued that robust public-sector efforts are required to check the more hedonistic private sector. Yet the comprehensiveness of Offer’s case studies—he’s much more of a social scientist than Galbraith, if less of a writer—has earned it respectful reviews even in pro-market magazines like The Economist.

The book is nothing if not ambitious. In ways that can occasionally seem like a reach, Offer blames the go-go economies in prosperous America and Britain for the rise of divorce rates, early sexual experimentation by teenagers, and an increase in working hours by parents—all of which have contributed, he concludes, to an alarming rise in mental disorders among the young.

Some economists, however, are already raising objections. Offer’s contention that wealthy individuals show self-restraint, but wealthy societies don’t, ‘‘infects the argument with an intellectual inconsistency,’’ says Donald J. Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. And, he notes, there are indications that Americans do plan for the future: Far more American children go on to college than they did 50 years ago, a sign of long-term planning amid affluence.

But even a skeptic can take away this point from Offer’s book: To increase overall contentment, we should talk less about money and more about what causes divorce, unemployment, too many hours at work, obesity, and traffic jams. ‘‘We can target specific causes of happiness and have substantial results,’’ Offer says. Hands up if you’d sacrifice some income for a shorter commute, or a bit more weekday time with the kids.

Christopher Shea's column appears biweekly in Ideas. E-mail critical.facultires@verizon.net.