Political Science Quarterly
Volume 115 No. 3 (Fall 2000)

 

The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies
By Robert E. Lane. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000.
Reviewed by Brian Barry

 

Is it true that there has been a loss of happiness in market democracies? According to Lane, in the ten Western European countries on which he has data between 1981 and 1990, "those who were predominantly satisfied with their lives increased . . . . from 79 to 83 percent. . . . In light of these cross-national data it is difficult to indict modernity for making people less happy; rather, it seems that in its declining SWB . . . . America is exceptional" (p. 21).

SWB stands for subjective well-being, that is, the answers people give to questions like "Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" But do measures of SWB get at what we are really interested in when we wonder about the conditions of happiness? For example, protection of rights in a country has zero correlation with SWB. "How can this be? . . . . One answer is that people will and do fight to the death to gain these rights, but, as with income, once achieved, they adapt to their good fortune" (p. 267). But this does not entail that the same people would say, if asked, "It was a complete waste of time risking our lives to get civil and political rights, because we're no better off than before." It may be that people get used to having a washing machine so that after a time it ceases to contribute to SWB, but that does not mean they would not object strongly to doing without it. We could interpret this, as Lane does, to imply that we are all slaves to the "hedonic treadmill," or we might think that we are genuinely better off with rights and home comforts and that there is something wrong with SWB. The subjective aspect of SWB is emphasized by the finding that "by group discussion of beliefs and values and rehearsing positive statements, self-reported happiness can be improved" (p. 46). Why bother with rights and amenities if all we have to do to increase our SWB is lower our expectations and count our blessings? Alternatively, why bother with SWB?

The claim of loss of happiness outside the United States is bolstered by evidence of "an epidemic of depression" and an increase in the suicide rate, especially among the young. But these statistics are notoriously liable to reporting bias. Lane acknowledges this for depression in an Appendix (p. 347), but does not allow skepticism into his main account. Yet the reported finding that of those Americans born before 1955, only one percent had suffered major depression by age 75 is incredible on its face. Recent notions that lethargy and apathy in the old are "really" depression simply mean that they have been found to perk up when administered antidepressive drugs. Similarly, there were plenty of people who were miserable for obvious external reasons in the past, but there was no point in calling this depression until antidepressant drugs came along. Again, the rise in youth suicides may just reflect increased openness. That the rate has declined in Sweden—generally thought to be the one country that was reporting suicides as suicides all along (Table 2.1, p. 23)—strengthens the suspicion that other increases may be an artifact of the declining stigmatization of suicide.

It may well still be true that most people in the United States suffer from increased stress because, in contrast to all other Western countries, they are working more and enjoying it less. But this, even if true, is far from substantiating the sweeping claim made in the title of the book.

Brian Barry
Columbia University