FIVE SIGNS THAT ECONOMIC GROWTH DOESN'T MAKE YOU HAPPIER

ANDREW OSWALD, FINANCIAL TIMES - Politicians mistakenly believe that
economic growth makes a nation happier. Britain is today experiencing
the longest period of sustained economic growth since the year 1701 ­
and we are ­determined to maintain it," began Gordon Brown, the
chancellor of the exchequer, in his 2005 Budget speech. Western
politicians think this way because they were taught to do so. But today
there is much statistical and laboratory ­evidence in favour of a
heresy: once a country has filled its larders there is no point in that
nation becoming richer.

The hippies, the Greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the
slow-food movement ­ all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely
derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being
confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists.

First, surveys show that the industrialized nations have not become
happier over time. Random samples of UK citizens today report the same
degree of psychological well-being and satisfaction with their lives as
did their (poorer) parents and grandparents. In the US, happiness has
fallen over time. White American females are markedly less happy than
were their mothers.

Second, using more formal measures of mental health, rates of depression
in countries such as the UK have increased.

Third, measured levels of stress at work have gone up.

Fourth, suicide statistics paint a picture that is often consistent with
such patterns. In the US, even though real income levels have risen
six­fold, the per-capita ­suicide rate is the same as in the year 1900.

Fifth, global warming means that growth has long-term consequences few
could have imagined in their undergraduate tutorials. . .

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/