Thanks for this, Michael. It’s really valuable to have someone carefully digging into these results. After reading Stevenson and Wolfers I’d sort of dismissed the paradox. This updated me against that view and has me more worried again.
I think I have more credence on the possibility that people’s scales are shifting over time than you do. In particular, questions like the Cantril ladder asks people to think about a 10⁄10 as the “best possible life”. But with growth, it’s plausible to me that the best possible life is getting better over time. Perhaps people are interpreting that as best possible (attainable) life, rather than as the cosmically-absolute best possible life. And someone living the best possible (attainable) life in 2022 can go to space, travel the world, eat every kind of food, and access every possible entertaining movie and game ever made. None of these was possible in 1922, even for people living their best possible lives.
To account for this, people would have to be shifting their scales over time. Or, it is plausible to me that my 10⁄10is different than my grandparents’, and in an objective sense my 10⁄10 is better than my grandparents’.
I think there might be a confusion here between quality of life and satisfaction with life.
As you say, the best possible life in 2022 contains many pleasant experiences and time-saving innovations that were unavailable to previous generations. However, it seems to me that modern lives are subject to more unmet desires and expectations are higher than in the past. As such, even though the lives of the current generation are materially better, this doesn’t mean that people are more satisfied than their grandparents.
John Clifton, CEO of Gallup, wrote in The Economist recently:
Fifteen years ago, before the widespread use of social media, 3.4% of people rated their lives a 10 (the best possible life) and only 1.6% rated their lives a zero (the worst possible life). Now the share of people with the best feasible lives has more than doubled (to 7.4%), and the share of people with the worst possible lives has more than quadrupled (to 7.6%).
If you group the world into wellbeing quintiles, this inequality is even more evident. In 2006, the top quintile for life ratings averaged 8.3; the lowest quintile averaged 2.5. Now, look at 2021. The top quintile averaged 8.9, and the lowest quintile averaged 1.2. The gap in those life ratings is now 7.7 points—the highest in Gallup’s history of tracking.
This wellbeing inequality is as serious as income inequality, in my view. It reflects a growing divide in emotions rather than possessions. And this type of inequality is plainly evident when you ask people to rate how their lives are going. Life could hardly be better for one fifth of the world, and for another fifth it could hardly be worse. It may be that the people at the top appreciate what they have more than ever before. For the most unhappy, they are more aware of what they lack than ever before.
Thanks for this, Michael. It’s really valuable to have someone carefully digging into these results. After reading Stevenson and Wolfers I’d sort of dismissed the paradox. This updated me against that view and has me more worried again.
I think I have more credence on the possibility that people’s scales are shifting over time than you do. In particular, questions like the Cantril ladder asks people to think about a 10⁄10 as the “best possible life”. But with growth, it’s plausible to me that the best possible life is getting better over time. Perhaps people are interpreting that as best possible (attainable) life, rather than as the cosmically-absolute best possible life. And someone living the best possible (attainable) life in 2022 can go to space, travel the world, eat every kind of food, and access every possible entertaining movie and game ever made. None of these was possible in 1922, even for people living their best possible lives.
To account for this, people would have to be shifting their scales over time. Or, it is plausible to me that my 10⁄10 is different than my grandparents’, and in an objective sense my 10⁄10 is better than my grandparents’.
I think there might be a confusion here between quality of life and satisfaction with life.
As you say, the best possible life in 2022 contains many pleasant experiences and time-saving innovations that were unavailable to previous generations. However, it seems to me that modern lives are subject to more unmet desires and expectations are higher than in the past. As such, even though the lives of the current generation are materially better, this doesn’t mean that people are more satisfied than their grandparents.
John Clifton, CEO of Gallup, wrote in The Economist recently: