RisingHappinessPPS.pdf

PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Development, Freedom, and

Rising Happiness

A Global Perspective (1981–2007)

Ronald Inglehart, 1 Roberto Foa, 2 Christopher Peterson, 3 and Christian Welzel 4

Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, 2 Department of Government, Harvard University, 3 Department of

Psychology, University of Michigan, 4 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany

overall increase in the happiness of their citizens (Easterlin,

1974; Kenny, 2004).

Moreover, biological factors are closely linked with a sense of

well-being (Ebstein, Novick, Umansky, Priel, & Osher, 1996;

Hamer, 1996), and twin studies suggest that happiness is heri-

table to a signiﬁcant extent (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996;

Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade 2005). Individual differ-

ences in happiness may therefore reﬂect inherent differences in

temperament and consequently resist change (Diener & Lucas,

1999). One widely accepted view is that happiness ﬂuctuates

around a ﬁxed set point (Headey & Wearing, 1989; Larsen,

2000; Williams & Thompson, 1993). Insofar as this set point is

biologically determined, neither individual efforts nor social

policy can bring lasting changes in happiness.

Another explanation for the apparent stability of the aggregate

happiness of nations is social comparison theory (Easterlin, 1974,

2003). According to this account, happiness stays the same in the

face of rising income because of a shift in reference. If happiness

is shaped by one’s relative position in a society, then even if a

nation’s overall economy grows, only those with above-average

gains will experience rising happiness, and these increases will

be offset by decreases among those with below-average gains.

A large body of evidence does indicate that the subjective

well-being (SWB) levels of given countries are stable. For ex-

ample, Inglehart (1990) demonstrated that life satisfaction

levels were very stable from 1973 to 1988 in most West Euro-

pean countries. Diener and Oishi (2000), Easterlin (2005),

Inglehart and Klingemann (2000), and Kahneman and Krueger

(2006) presented similar ﬁndings. But the strongest support for

the claim that the happiness levels of countries have not risen

over time comes from the United States, which provides by far

the longest and most detailed time-series data on SWB. Hun-

dreds of surveys have measured happiness and life satisfaction

among the American public in almost every year since 1946. No

other country has a comparable database, and the US data show

a ﬂat trend from 1946 to the present.

ABSTRACT— Until recently, it was widely held that happi-

ness ﬂuctuates around set points, so that neither individ-

uals nor societies can lastingly increase their happiness.

Even though recent research showed that some individuals

move enduringly above or below their set points, this does

not refute the idea that the happiness levels of entire so-

cieties remain ﬁxed. Our article, however, challenges this

idea: Data from representative national surveys carried

out from 1981 to 2007 show that happiness rose in 45 of the

52 countries for which substantial time-series data were

available. Regression analyses suggest that that the extent

to which a society allows free choice has a major impact on

happiness. Since 1981, economic development, democra-

tization, and increasing social tolerance have increased

the extent to which people perceive that they have free

choice, which in turn has led to higher levels of happiness

around the world, as the human development model

suggests.

Psychologists, economists, biologists, sociologists, and political

scientists have long investigated human happiness, and one

claim found widespread acceptance until recently: Happiness

remains constant. Research implies that neither rising pros-

perity nor severe misfortune permanently affect happiness. Af-

ter a period of adjustment, individuals return to their baseline

levels of well-being, leaving humanity on a ‘‘hedonic treadmill’’

(Brickman & Campbell, 1981; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith,

1999; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwartz, & Stone, 2004).

Similarly, as entire countries become richer, relative gains and

losses neutralize each other across populations, bringing no

Address correspondence to Ronald Inglehart, Institute for Social

Research,

University

Michigan,

Ann

Arbor,

48106-1248;

e-mail: RInglehart@gmail.com.

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Volume 3—Number 4

Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson, and Christian Welzel

Because the happiness levels of given societies do not seem to

change over time, the idea that economic development brings

rising happiness has been widely rejected. Although rich nations

show higher levels of SWB than do poor countries, these differ-

ences may reﬂect cultural differences in what happiness means.

THEORETICAL DISCUSSION

Can Happiness Change?

Recent research questions the view that the happiness of indi-

viduals is unchanging. Diener, Lucas, and Scollon (2006)

demonstrated that the SWB levels of some people can and do

change over time. Fujita and Diener (2005) analyzed data from a

17-year German panel study, ﬁnding that 24% of the respon-

dents’ life satisfaction levels changed signiﬁcantly from the ﬁrst

5 years of the study to the last 5 years. Similarly, Lucas, Clark,

Georgellis, and Diener (2003) analyzed a 15-year longitudinal

study of the effects of marital transitions on life satisfaction.

They found that, on average, individuals moved back toward

their baseline levels of satisfaction, but a signiﬁcant numbers of

individuals remained above their original baseline level and

others remained below it. Individuals are not necessarily trap-

ped on a hedonic treadmill.

What about nations? Findings that happiness can change for

individuals do not necessarily mean that the happiness levels of

given societies change. Social comparison theory holds that the

relative gains and losses of different individuals in a given na-

tion will cancel each other out, resulting in no discernible shifts

upward or downward for a society as a whole.

Cross-sectional comparisons of nations show that there is

considerable variation in the happiness of their people and that

economic development is strongly correlated with happiness:

Inglehart (1990, Chapter 1) analyzed data from 24 countries

covering a wide range of economic levels and found a .67 cor-

relation between per capita gross national product (GNP) and

life satisfaction. He interpreted this as implying that economic

development is conducive to rising happiness.

Until now, longitudinal evidence has not provided compelling

support for this interpretation. Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003)

argued that growth does increase happiness, demonstrating that

income was positively correlated with happiness in 14 of the 21

nations for which data were available from 1972 to 1994.

However, Easterlin (2005) argued that their ﬁndings at the level

of speciﬁc nations were not robust and relied on different

measures of happiness administered to different types of sam-

ples and thus failed to control for seasonal effects. Even though

they demonstrated an increase in ‘‘happy life years’’ across all

nations for which considerable time-series data are available,

this result is almost entirely driven by the increase in life ex-

pectancy and not by an increase in happiness itself. More re-

cently, Hagerty and Veenhoven (2006) demonstrated

statistically signiﬁcant increases in SWB in four of eight high-

income countries and in three of four low-income countries for

Fig. 1. Economic development leads to a shift in survival strategies.

From Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and

Political Change in 43 Societies, by R. Inglehart, 1997, Princeton, NJ:

Press. Reprinted with permission.

which a long time series was available, but the evidence did not

seem decisive. The authors summed up the debate as follows:

‘‘The difference arises from the fact that the available data are

not too clear and therefore allow different interpretations. Eas-

terlin reads the data as showing that the glass is half empty, while

we see the glass to be half full.’’ (Hagerty & Veenhoven, 2006,

p. 422). The claim that happiness has risen in most countries

remains unsettled and is not generally accepted.

The present article reports cross-national longitudinal ﬁnd-

ings that are not undermined by problems of methodological

incomparability. The Values Survey have asked the same

questions in the same format to large representative national

samples of respondents in scores of countries from 1981 to 2007,

allowing a more deﬁnitive test of the hypothesis that happiness

has increased in most countries (a hypothesis that has been

proven true, as we will see later in the article).

Theoretical Frame: Human Development and Happiness

As important as it is to determine if the happiness of nations has

changed, it is even more important to understand why it may

have changed. Economic development within a nation is a likely

starting point for any explanation because it is demonstrably

associated with psychological changes that in turn should im-

pact people’s happiness (Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995).

Inglehart (1997) hypothesized that economic development

brings a societal-level shift from maximizing economic growth to

maximizing SWB (see Fig. 1):

The transition from a society of scarcity to a society of security

brings a dramatic increase in subjective well-being. But we ﬁnd a

threshold at which economic growth no longer seems to increase

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Volume 3—Number 4

Development, Freedom, and Happiness

increasingly widespread around the world, contributing to de-

mocratization, growing support for gender equality, and growing

acceptance of outgroups such as gays and lesbians (Inglehart &

Welzel, 2005).

Inglehart (1990) found that happiness is strongly related to

democracy (Barro, 1999; Frey & Stutzer, 2000; Inglehart &

Klingemann, 2000). This relationship seems to be reciprocal:

High levels of SWB are conducive to democracy, and democracy

provides a wider range of free choice, which is conducive to

SWB (Haller & Hadler, 2004; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Ott,

2001; Veenhoven, 2000; Welsch, 2003).

Like democratization, social tolerance broadens the range of

choices available to people, thus enhancing happiness.

Accordingly, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) found that support for

gender equality and tolerance of outgroups were strongly linked

with happiness—not just because tolerant people are happier,

but because living in a tolerant society enhances everyone’s

freedom of choice. Similarly, Schyns (1998) argued that gender

equality is linked with happiness.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, dozens of societies

experienced transitions to democracy that enhanced freedom of

expression, freedom to travel, and free choice in politics.

Moreover, from 1981 to 2007, support for both gender equality

and tolerance of outgroups increased substantially in most of the

countries monitored by the Values Surveys (Inglehart & Welzel,

2005). Furthermore, during the past two decades, low-income

countries containing fully half of the world’s population have

experienced one of the highest rates of economic growth in

history, allowing them to emerge from subsistence-level poverty.

By a favorable combination of circumstances, societal changes

of the past two decades have increased both the prosperity of

people in less-prosperous societies and the political and social

freedom of people in middle-income and high-income societies,

enhancing the extent to which people in both types of societies

have free choice in how to live their lives. We hypothesize that

these changes have been conducive to rising levels of happiness

within entire societies.

subjective well-being signiﬁcantly. This may be linked with the

fact that at this level, starvation is no longer a real concern for most

people. Survival begins to be taken for granted. Signiﬁcant num-

bers of Postmaterialists begin to emerge and for them, further

economic gains no longer produce an increase in subjective well-

being. From a rational actor’s perspective, one would expect

economic development to eventually bring a shift in survival

strategies. Figure 2–4 suggests how this works. At low levels of

economic development, even modest economic gains bring a high

return in terms of caloric intake, clothing, shelter, medical care

and ultimately, in life expectancy itself. For individuals to give top

priority to maximizing economic gains, and for a society to give top

priority to economic growth, is a highly effective survival strategy.

But once a society has reached a certain threshold of development

. . . one reaches a point at which further economic growth brings

only minimal gains in both life expectancy and in subjective well

being. There is still a good deal of cross-national variation, but

from this point on non-economic aspects of life become increas-

ingly important inﬂuences on how long, and how well, people live.

Beyond this point, a rational strategy would be to place increasing

emphasis on quality of life concerns, rather than to continue the

inﬂexible pursuit of economic growth as if it were a good in itself.

(Inglehart, 1997, pp. 64–65)

This societal-level shift is linked with individual-level value

changes, from giving top priority to economic and physical se-

curity toward giving top priority to self-expression values that

emphasize participation, freedom of expression, and quality of

life. Under conditions of scarcity, people focus on survival

needs, giving top priority to economic and physical security.

Economic development increases people’s sense of existential

security, leading them to shift their emphasis from survival

values toward self-expression values and free choice, which is a

more direct way to maximize happiness and life satisfaction.

The underlying theme of this shift in life strategies is to

deemphasize external authority and maximize individual au-

tonomy. How it operates is spelled out more fully in the human

development model proposed by Welzel, Inglehart, and Klin-

gemann (2003) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005). This model

proposes that human development shifts emphasis from the

pursuit of happiness through economic means toward a broader

pursuit of happiness by maximizing free choice in all realms of

life. The belief that one has free choice and control over one’s life

is closely linked with happiness (Johnson & Krueger, 2006), and

this link seems to be universal. Happiness is linked with peo-

ple’s sense of freedom across all major cultural zones (Inglehart

& Welzel, 2005, p. 140). In many societies, people value

free choice as much as they value economic security (Sen,

2001), and emphasis on freedom increases with rising economic

security.

The fact that people change the way in which they pursue

happiness does not necessarily mean that they will attain it. But

since 1981, these shifts in individual-level values have con-

tributed to societal changes that are conducive to human hap-

piness.

THE PRESENT STUDY

The happiness of nations was investigated with data from the

World Values Survey and European Values Study, which have

carried out ﬁve waves of surveys from 1981 to 2007 in scores of

countries containing almost 90% of the world’s population. All

ﬁve waves of surveys included two widely used indicators of

SWB—happiness and overall life satisfaction—administered in

the same format in equivalent translations in every wave.

To test whether happiness levels have risen, we constructed an

SWB index using these two indicators. The index provides a

broader based and more reliable indicator of the SWB levels of

given societies than do either of its two components. We examined

the trends on this indicator and its two components in 52 societies.

Since

1981,

self-expression

values

have

become

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Volume 3—Number 4

Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson, and Christian Welzel

To test the hypothesis that factors reﬂecting free choice were

conducive to rising levels of happiness, we carried out ordinary-

least-squares (OLS) panel regression analysis to analyze soci-

etal-level effects and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM)

regression analysis to test the interaction of individual-level and

societal-level effects, using the SWB index, happiness, and life

satisfaction as dependent variables and measures of the feeling

that one has free choice and related attitudes as independent

variables, while controlling for democratization and growth in

per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

Because life satisfaction is measured on a 10-point scale and

happiness is measured on a 4-point scale, and because the two

questions have opposite polarity, the SWB composite was con-

structed as follows: SWB5life satisfaction – 2.5 happiness. If

100% of its people were very happy and extremely satisﬁed, a

country would get the maximum score of 7.5. If happiness and

life satisfaction were evenly balanced, the country would get a

score of zero. If more were people dissatisﬁed or unhappy than

satisﬁed or happy, the country would get a negative score.

Respondents also indicated to what extent they felt they had

free choice and control over their lives, using a scale that ranged

from 1 (none at all)to10(a great deal). They also designated

groups of people that they would not like to have as neighbors,

using a list that included drug addicts, people of a different race,

people with AIDS, immigrants/foreign workers, homosexuals,

people of a different religion, and heavy drinkers. Responses to

these items correlated strongly, with acceptance or rejection of

homosexuals being a particularly sensitive indicator of overall

tolerance of outgroups. Respondents also indicated to what ex-

tent they felt that homosexuality can be justiﬁed, using a scale

that ranged from 1 (never)to10(always). A number of items in

these surveys tapped religiosity, but the most sensitive indicator

asked participants to answer the question ‘‘How important is

God in your life?’’ using a 10-pont scale ranging from 1 (not at all

important)to10(very important). Respondents were also asked,

‘‘How proud are you to be (country’s nationality)?’’ Response

options were very proud, quite proud, not very proud, and not at

all proud. These items were used to test, respectively, the impact

of a sense of free choice, tolerance of outgroups, religiosity, and

national pride on SWB.

To measure the impact of economic factors and democrati-

zation, we used the society’s GDP per capita (purchasing power

parity estimates) and economic growth rate from the World Bank

database and a measure of a society’s level of democracy from

the Polity IV project (for information about this project, see

http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity).

Method

Research Participants and Procedure

Over the past few decades, the Values Surveys have interviewed

representative national samples of scores of countries, with an

average sample size of 1,400 respondents. Over 1,000 publi-

cations have been based on these data. Extensive information

about publications, ﬁndings, ﬁeldwork, and the organization of

these surveys can be found at http://worldvaluessurvey.org. 1

The present article presents the results of cross-sectional

analysis based on data from scores of nations containing almost

90% of the world’s population. The longitudinal analyses pre-

sented here are based on data from the 52 nations for which

substantial time-series data are available. ‘‘Substantial time-

series data’’ is deﬁned as having surveys from at least two waves

that were scheduled to be held at least 10 years apart. Because

actual ﬁeldwork sometimes took place earlier or later than tar-

geted, the actual time span between surveys was sometimes less

than 10 years and sometimes as much as 26 years. For the av-

erage country, we analyzed the changes that took place over a

period of 17 years, as measured by almost four surveys per

country. Appendix A shows the year of ﬁeldwork for each of the

194 surveys as well as the levels of happiness and life satis-

faction and the SWB index score from that survey.

Measures

Life satisfaction was assessed by asking respondents to indicate

how satisﬁed they were with their life as a whole, using a scale

that ranged from 1 (not at all satisﬁed)to10(very satisﬁed).

Happiness was assessed by asking respondents to indicate how

happy they were, using four categories: very happy, rather happy,

not very happy, and not at all happy. These items are sensitive

indicators of a broad SWB dimension (Andrews & Withey,

1976), capturing most of the common variance in scores of do-

main-speciﬁc indicators. They were included in all ﬁve waves of

the Values Surveys.

For a composite measure of SWB, we combined each person’s

responses to the questions about happiness and life satisfaction

to produce an SWB index, giving equal weight to each variable.

Results

Overall, here is what we found. Cross-sectional data from the

1990 Values Surveys suggested that economic development is

conducive to rising levels of SWB; this interpretation was pro-

posed by Inglehart (1997) and Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003).

Longitudinal evidence did not seem to support it, however, and it

was not generally accepted. The following analyses use a

broader and more reliable longitudinal data base than was

previously available to test the hypothesis that factors conducive

to human choice, such as economic development and democ-

ratization, do bring rising levels of SWB. Cross-sectional anal-

ysis of recent data conﬁrms that economic development is

indeed strongly linked with high levels of SWB, but it also in-

dicates that economic factors are only part of the story. Pooled

time-series regression analysis suggests that religion, tolerance

1 Fieldwork information, questionnaires in the original languages, and reports

of ﬁndings can be downloaded from this site.

267

Volume 3—Number 4

Development, Freedom, and Happiness

of outgroups, and a society’s level of democracy are strong

predictors of subsequent levels of SWB, controlling for eco-

nomic development and a society’s initial level of SWB.

Analysis of changes over time suggest that all of the foregoing

factors inﬂuence SWB mainly insofar as they enable people to

have a wider range of free choice. As the years since 1981 have

been a period of global economic growth, widespread democ-

ratization, and rising social tolerance, this implies that SWB

should have increased. And longitudinal evidence from 52

countries for which substantial time-series data are available

demonstrate that feelings of free choice did increase from 1981

to 2007 and that SWB increased in an overwhelming majority

(fully 77%) of these countries.

income bring relatively little change in well-being (Frey &

Stutzer, 2000; Inglehart, 1990, 1997; Myers, 1993).

Figure 2 makes another important point. Quite apart from

their level of economic development, some types of societies do

a better job of maximizing their citizens’ SWB than others do. All

13 of the Latin American countries for which there were data

showed higher levels of SWB than their economic levels would

predict. Conversely, although they are about as rich as Latin

America, almost all of the ex-communist societies showed lower

levels of SWB than their economic levels would predict. Indeed,

Russia and other ex-Soviet states showed lower levels than did

much poorer countries such as India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mali,

and Ethiopia.

Life satisfaction and happiness showed similar patterns, with

the Latin American societies being overachievers and the ex-

communist societies being underachievers on both indicators of

SWB. Across the Latin American countries, 45% of the popu-

lation described themselves as very happy, and 42% rated

themselves as very satisﬁed with their lives as a whole. In the ex-

communist countries, only 12% described themselves as very

happy, and only 14% were very satisﬁed. Though their economic

levels are fairly similar, Latin Americans were three to four

times as likely to have high levels of SWB.

Communist rule is not necessarily linked with low levels of

SWB: China and Vietnam—still ruled by communist parties and

currently enjoying high rates of economic growth—showed

much higher levels of well-being than the Soviet successor

states. The collapse of their political, economic, and belief

systems seem to have sharply reduced SWB in the ex-commu-

nist societies. Many of them have a damaged national myth. The

Soviet Union and Yugoslavia once played prominent roles in the

world, which may have brought feelings of pride and satisfaction

to many of their citizens. Today, they have splintered into 21

diminished successor states.

Although religion has long been weak in these countries,

communist ideology may once have played a role comparable to

that of religion. For many decades, communism seemed to be the

wave of the future. The belief that they were building a better

society may have given a sense of purpose to the lives of many

people. It is difﬁcult to understand the rise of the communist

movements in Russia, China, and Vietnam without recognizing

the motivating power of a belief system that once gave meaning

to many people’s lives and made them willing to sacriﬁce their

lives for the cause. In Latin America, traditional beliefs in God

and country remain strong, but in the ex-communist countries,

the collapse of communism has left a spiritual vacuum.

The striking contrast between the SWB levels of Latin

America and the ex-communist countries suggests that some

types of societies are more conducive to high levels of SWB

than are others—quite apart from economic factors. Accord-

ingly, dummy variables for Latin American and ex-communist

countries explain a large share of the cross-national variance

in SWB, even controlling for economic variables. But this

Economic Development and Happiness

Figure 2 shows the relationship between economic development

and SWB in 88 countries containing almost 90% of the world’s

population. To maximize reliability, this ﬁgure is based on data

from all surveys carried out in a given country from 1995 to

2007. We used per capita GDP from 5 years before a country’s

mean survey, to reﬂect the time lag between reaching a given

level of prosperity and its impact on SWB. The solid curve on

Figure 2 depicts the cubic regression line for the relationship

between per capita GDP and SWB. If a society’s SWB were

wholly determined by its level of economic development, it

would fall on this line. Happiness and life satisfaction rise

steeply as one moves from subsistence-level poverty to a modest

level of economic security and then levels off. 2 Among the

richest societies, further increases in income are only weakly

linked with higher levels of SWB.

As Figure 2 indicates, the aggregate SWB of nations is closely

related to economic development (r 5 .62, p < .001). The people

of high-income countries are much happier and are more sat-

isﬁed with life than are the people of low-income countries, and

the differences are substantial. In Denmark, 52% of the public

indicated that they were highly satisﬁed with their lives (placing

themselves at 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale), and 45% said they

were very happy. In Armenia, only 5% were highly satisﬁed with

their lives, and just 6% were very happy. In contrast to the small

income-linked differences usually found within most countries,

the cross-national differences are extremely large.

The relationship between SWB and economic development is

curvilinear, explaining why it is so widely believed that eco-

nomic development has no impact on SWB. Previous longitu-

dinal studies relied heavily on U.S. data, and the U.S. long ago

made the transition from subsistence-level poverty to middle-

income status. Among higher income nations, further gains in

2 One can turn this curve into a straight line by performing a log transfor-

mation of per capita GNP, but this is simply another way of acknowledging that

the relationship between economic development and happiness reﬂects a curve

of diminishing returns. The effects of economic development almost always do

show diminishing returns, so economists habitually use a log transformation of

the economic measure. This does not change the underlying reality.

268

Volume 3—Number 4

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