Just Who Are the Unhappy People -- and Where and How Do They Live, and Just Who Do They Vote for?
Results of a retrospective econometric examination of the 51 year old annual General Social Survey of US citizens
Sam Peltzman, an emeritus professor in economics at the University of Chicago, just (7/21/23) posted the results of his examination of survey data of American social attitudes as they have changed since 1972. Title of his 44 page report is “The Socio Political Demography of Happiness”. The graphs of Peltzman tell most of the story.
It’s interesting that Peltzman’s data suggest overall male happiness may be currently on the upswing. Of course, this might be the simple effect of the entry of PDE5 inhibitors like Viagra and Tadalafil into the pharmaceutical market after about 2010 (the FDA has yet to approve the use of these NO-increasing drugs for women):
Peltzman states that marital status is the single most important predictor of an individual’s level of happiness. In this regard, I refer you here to a graph that I’ve posted before, and duplicate below, that indicates American ability to enter and then sustain a marriage has declined steeply since about 1960.
Previously, middle-age in America was a period of higher happiness. This no longer is true. In America, both young adults and middle-aged adults dwell in a similarly low state of dissatisfaction with their lives:
Peltzman summarizes the following graph set by (wryly?) observing, “… the black-white [happiness] gap has narrowed substantially.”
It helps a lot to be rich, evidently - everyone else is not nearly so happy, though:
I would like to see the following geographic categories employed by Peltzman broken down into smaller units. I cannot, for example, believe that the citizens of the three states of the Pacific West are as currently contented with their lot as people living in the more interior western states. The American Northeast is evidently the home of the dour.1
Formerly, living in rural America was generally an apparent partial defense against discontent. Not so much anymore — but there are still definitely much worse environments to live in:
Finally, although the attitudes of Americans of all political stripes have been beaten down somewhat by modern circumstances, Peltzman’s data again confirm the consistent finding of many others that conservative political attitudes are those most closely associated with general level of personal happiness.2
Which might explain why more hard liquor is drunk (sic) in that region of the country.
This factor co-varies with gender, as currently women are more liberal in attitude than men, and — as Figure 2 above shows — the average level of unhappiness of American women is still on the descent.