One of the most difficult things these days is to establish some truths about the state of the world. What really is happening? I read so many research papers, books and news stories simply in an effort to keep up and try to get a proper, realistic view…. an in-depth, informed perspective.Research is so complex, but it can lead to simple and powerful insights. This morning I was really thrilled to read a new research paper on happiness and wellbeing. The World Values Survey is publishing the results of a longitudinal research analysis in Perspectives on Psychological Science (July, 2008) Development, Freedom, and Happiness: A Global PerspectiveData from representative national surveys carried out from 1981 to 2007 show that happiness rose in 45 of the 52 countries. The country rankings showed that USA was 16, Britain was 21, Zimbabwe 97.Democratization and rising social tolerance contributed even more than economic development to a growing sense of free choice, and thus to rising levels of happiness. 

“The strong version of the hedonic treadmill model was supported by three arguments: (a) individuals have a long-term happiness set point to which they readapt, despite changing circumstances; (b) this set-point is largely genetically determined; (c) societies’ happiness levels remain fixed over time. Recent research argues that the first two points should be re-interpreted as strong tendencies and not iron laws. The findings presented here support this reassessment, and demonstrate that the third point also needs to be modified: the happiness levels of nations can and do change.” “Taken together, these findings suggest that the hedonic treadmill model should be revised but not abandoned. The twin studies provide convincing evidence that genetic factors have an important impact on subjective well-being. And there is abundant and equally convincing evidence that people adapt to Development, Freedom, Happiness changes, so that subjective well-being levels tend to fluctuate around stable set-points. But these factors are not as dominant as earlier interpretations suggested. The hedonic treadmill model is a tendency that prevails only when other factors are constant.”  

This paper questions some of the methods of previous happiness measurement data, but also within their conclusions they write: 

“We would not expect subjective well-being to continue rising forever. Even apart from ceiling effects, recent years have seen a conjunction of favorable factors. Many low-income and middle-income countries experienced exceptionally high rates of economic growth, in the range of 4 to 11 percent annually. Rich countries had relatively little economic growth (in the range of 1 to 3%), but they experienced remarkable rates of social liberation, with hard-core opposition to gender equality and homosexuality falling by roughly half since 1981(Inglehart and Welzel, 2005).”  

“These findings suggest that subjective well-being has important social consequences: Falling levels of subjective well-being were a leading indicator of the collapse of former communist systems. These findings also have important implications for social scientists and policymakers, for they imply that human happiness is not fixed, but can be influenced by belief systems and social policies.”