Creative Class

Earlier this week, I discussed the new Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index of happy cities. Today, with the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, we take a look at some of the social, demographic, and economic factors that are associated with the happiness and well-being of cities.

There has been considerable debate on the factors that are associated with happiness and well-being at the national level. The well-known Easterlin Paradox suggested that happiness tends to level off after a certain income threshold. Psychologists, notably Edward Diener, have argued that factors such as health, challenging work, and close social relationships, among others, play a considerable role in happiness. Some have even made the case for instituting a new measure of gross national happiness to supplement conventional metrics like gross national product.

Recent studies by Princeton University’s Angus Deaton and Justin Wolfers and Betsy Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School question the Easterlin Paradox and indicate a closer link between happiness and income across nations. Carol Graham raises the enigma of the “happy peasant and the miserable millionaire” as a way to resolve this apparent paradox. Graham suggests that happiness is relative to one’s position in society. Take unemployment for example. Unemployment is crushing for previously employed people in places where gainful employment is the norm. But people in poor countries where unemployment is more the norm find other ways to be happy. (more…)

Though U.S. unemployment is in the 10 percent range and we continue to hear people are “just happy to be employed,” a new survey from The Conference Board finds that only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. Even greater numbers of those under 25 are unhappy with their employment.

Here is an excerpt from the On Deadline column/blog at USA Today.

Only 45% of American are satisfied with their work, the lowest level ever recorded in 22 years of surveys, the Associated Press reports.

The figure is down from 49% in 2008, says the Conference Board research group, which conducts the survey.

Workers under 25 expressed the most dissatisfaction — about 64% of them saying they are unhappy in their jobs.

That is a pretty large number of young American workers starting their careers in a negative way. One of the key findings was that most workers don’t find their job interesting.

Doing something interesting — creating something new, solving a problem that is important to a group of people, and working in an industry one is passionate about — is a key driver for talented people.

For some of the talented, this wave of unhappiness in the U.S. workplace will lead them to form new firms or become self-employed. This should lead to greater innovation and societal wealth.

Moreover, smart existing organizations will continue to improve what they offer to talent. Even in the depths of a recession, talent must be satisfied with fair compensation, a stimulating environment and challenging work. This dissatisfaction trend, The Conference Board points out, has been growing for decades.

Over the past week, I’ve discussed the role of class in economic performance, innovation, and entrepreneurship. But what about happiness? There is considerable debate over the happiness of nations. The Easterlin paradox suggests that there is little or no relationship between a country’s economic development and its level of happiness in comparison to others. A recent influential paper by economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson contradicts the Easterlin paradox, finding a clear relationship between economic development (measured as GDP per capita) and happiness. In other words, countries that increase their wealth become happier, and countries that increase their wealth more than other nations become happier than others.

But what about the effects of class on happiness? Are societies in which a greater share of workers are members of the creative class on balance happier than those with large working class populations?

To get at this, Charlotta Mellander used data on happiness – measured as overall life satisfaction – from the Gallup Organization’s World Poll.

The results could not be more striking. Happy nations appear to be creative class nations.

Nations with a large concentration of the working class are far less happy. In fact they appear downright unhappy. Perhaps Marx was right after all about the alienation that comes from industrial work – or, in this case, the unhappiness found in working class locations.

Source of all graphics: Martin Prosperity Institute

We’ll be doing more on the connection between class structure and the happiness of nations in the future, so stay tuned.

Will Wilkinson picks up on the relationship between happiness and income.

That’s the central conclusion of a new study published in the British Medical Journal.  Fortunately, unhappiness is far less so. Here’s one press summary:

A sociology professor at Harvard University, Nicholas Christakis, has discovered that happiness is contagious. In a report published today by the British Medical Journal, Christakis finds that happiness can spread like a virus through social networks, extending up to three degrees of separation: in other words, to the friends of one’s friend’s friends. Christakis concludes: “People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.” … Thankfully, Christakis’s report shows that unhappiness is not nearly as contagious as happiness. “Unhappiness doesn’t spread as intensely or as consistently as happiness,” says the professor.

The full paper is here (h/t: Charlotta Mellander).