[EQ] Happiness And Health: Lessons-And Questions-For Public Policy

Happiness And Health: Lessons—And Questions—For Public Policy

 

Carol Graham, senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland in College Park

Health Affairs, January-February Issue - Volume 27, No. 1 - 2008

 

Website: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/27/1/72

 

PDF [12p.] at: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/27/1/72

 

“…….This paper reviews the happiness-health relationship from an economics perspective, highlighting the role of adaptation. People’s expectations for health standards influence their reported health and associated happiness, a finding that roughly mirrors the Easterlin paradox in income and happiness.

Research on unhappiness and obesity shows that norms and stigma vary a great deal across countries and cohorts, mediating the related well-being costs. Better understanding this variance and its effects on incentives for addressing the condition is important to policy design. More generally, the paper discusses how happiness surveys can—and cannot—inform public health policy…”

“….PROLOGUE: Throughout the centuries, human happiness and its causes have been a central concern to clerics, philosophers, psychologists, and therapists of various kinds. Given the subject matter, some might be surprised to see economists dipping their toes into these waters, viewing them as Johnny-come-latelys or even as gatecrashers—economics, after all, is sometimes known as the "dismal science." But economists have their own rich tradition in this area, and their discipline is, in fact, rooted in "moral science," in which happiness plays a central role. Moreover, as "queen of the social sciences," economics brings with it insights from myriad aspects of social life and a vast array of mathematical tools for exploring relationships between self-reported happiness and just about anything else one can think of….”

 

 

 

 

 

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