Correlation between Happiness and Poverty: Satisfaction with the Status Quo?
"I remember those days when we were just playing around in the little stream around our house...there were no pollution, no social pressures, no corruptions...sure, we were poor, but everyone was really happy because everyone was equally poor..." Speaking with the likes of my parents' generation, spending their childhood in the pre-economic reform, pre-Cultural Revolution mainland China, these are the kind of nostalgic thoughts that are often fondly remember and recall. The younger generations, too used to being surrounded by hardly comparable materialistic wealth, quietly react to such fanciful descriptions with scoff.
It is fair to say that, in the last few decades of global integration, the change in individual mentality has been even more dramatic than those in political or economic structures for the group of rapidly emerging developing countries like China. The ethos of modern-day Chinese is not that different from their counterparts in the developed world. "Progress" for both hinges on continued improvements in the living standards, most obviously defined by greater availability of physical objects such as convenient electronics for everyday use and better social infrastructure.
The mentality is, in sum, one of continued displeasure with the existing situation at hand. Sure, life is better now that it was in years ago, but what is preventing it from getting better, and making more drastic improvements in shorter amounts of time? The emphasis on looking beyond what one already has is fundamentally a source of displeasure and unhappiness for most of the population. And thanks to race to the economic top among nations and individuals, the constant unhappiness is integrated with the socio-political environment.
Against the background of such a way of modern thinking, the Economist magazine recently released a graph showing that the degree of "happiness," as defined by the percentage of surveyed citizens calling themselves "happy" in a random-sampling poll, has fairly remarkable negative correlation with wealth, as defined by the country's GDP per capita. In other words, the magazine blandly noted, with a simple economic regression, that throughout the world, poor people tend to be happier, or at least so they say they are.
The very existence of such correlation may be the reflection of just how far globalization has come, especially in the developing world. In the isolated China of the 1950s and 1960s, very few common people had an exact idea just how wealthy the developed world is. Without a concrete standard of comparison, the people can credibly believe that they are indeed living a very good life, and despite all the inconveniences they faced, their level of materialistic wealth was what is considered "normal" and perfectly acceptable.
Fast-forward three decades, every family knows someone who has been or lived abroad, in developed states such as the US or Japan, and through first or secondhand information, everyone can easily put a finger on where and how just how much behind China is compared to the developed world. Current level of materialistic wealth becomes insufficient as everyone knows or has seen just how much more others can have. Greater understanding of economic inequality across the globe, gained through faster and more abundant dissemination of information, may be the culprit of greater "unhappiness."
The correlation between perceived inequality and unhappiness could very well be just as noticeable within a country as it is throughout the world. A corollary of the Economist data given could be one that shows that higher Gini coefficient, denoting greater internal wealth gap, would lead to lower overall happiness within the country. One would venture to say that such an amended portion would hold for all countries irrespective of overall wealth denoted by GDP per capita or some other indicator. Unhappiness is generated from relative wealth, not absolute one.
Yet, the unhappiness should not be considered purely in the negative terms. Dissatisfaction with the status quo can be transformed into positive energy that lead to the strive of the poorer individual or nation to catch up with those above them on the wealth scale. The Unhappiness can be translated into greater effort or even efficiency at the individual level, and, holding the overall economic and political environment constant, greater economic growth for the country. Perhaps attempting to show a correlation between lower happiness and greater economic growth rate would be possible as well...
It is fair to say that, in the last few decades of global integration, the change in individual mentality has been even more dramatic than those in political or economic structures for the group of rapidly emerging developing countries like China. The ethos of modern-day Chinese is not that different from their counterparts in the developed world. "Progress" for both hinges on continued improvements in the living standards, most obviously defined by greater availability of physical objects such as convenient electronics for everyday use and better social infrastructure.
The mentality is, in sum, one of continued displeasure with the existing situation at hand. Sure, life is better now that it was in years ago, but what is preventing it from getting better, and making more drastic improvements in shorter amounts of time? The emphasis on looking beyond what one already has is fundamentally a source of displeasure and unhappiness for most of the population. And thanks to race to the economic top among nations and individuals, the constant unhappiness is integrated with the socio-political environment.
Against the background of such a way of modern thinking, the Economist magazine recently released a graph showing that the degree of "happiness," as defined by the percentage of surveyed citizens calling themselves "happy" in a random-sampling poll, has fairly remarkable negative correlation with wealth, as defined by the country's GDP per capita. In other words, the magazine blandly noted, with a simple economic regression, that throughout the world, poor people tend to be happier, or at least so they say they are.
The very existence of such correlation may be the reflection of just how far globalization has come, especially in the developing world. In the isolated China of the 1950s and 1960s, very few common people had an exact idea just how wealthy the developed world is. Without a concrete standard of comparison, the people can credibly believe that they are indeed living a very good life, and despite all the inconveniences they faced, their level of materialistic wealth was what is considered "normal" and perfectly acceptable.
Fast-forward three decades, every family knows someone who has been or lived abroad, in developed states such as the US or Japan, and through first or secondhand information, everyone can easily put a finger on where and how just how much behind China is compared to the developed world. Current level of materialistic wealth becomes insufficient as everyone knows or has seen just how much more others can have. Greater understanding of economic inequality across the globe, gained through faster and more abundant dissemination of information, may be the culprit of greater "unhappiness."
The correlation between perceived inequality and unhappiness could very well be just as noticeable within a country as it is throughout the world. A corollary of the Economist data given could be one that shows that higher Gini coefficient, denoting greater internal wealth gap, would lead to lower overall happiness within the country. One would venture to say that such an amended portion would hold for all countries irrespective of overall wealth denoted by GDP per capita or some other indicator. Unhappiness is generated from relative wealth, not absolute one.
Yet, the unhappiness should not be considered purely in the negative terms. Dissatisfaction with the status quo can be transformed into positive energy that lead to the strive of the poorer individual or nation to catch up with those above them on the wealth scale. The Unhappiness can be translated into greater effort or even efficiency at the individual level, and, holding the overall economic and political environment constant, greater economic growth for the country. Perhaps attempting to show a correlation between lower happiness and greater economic growth rate would be possible as well...
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