Americans are doing pretty well on the happiness meter

Yet a glimmer of hope persists: We are, as a country, remarkably happy.

The recent AP-Gfk poll showed that 78 percent of Americans, when asked to “think about how things are going in your life in general,” said they are very happy or somewhat happy.

Despite the deluge of depressing national data this year, one might reasonably ask: How should we measure ourselves, if not by our happiness?

Indeed, philosophers have grappled with this question since before there was a Christmas. Aristotle said: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Our founding fathers listed its pursuit as one of our inalienable rights.

More recently, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that national well-being be measured alongside gross domestic product. And a growing academic field of behavioral and social science researchers have turned their attention to the age-old questions. What is happiness? What makes us happy? How do we know?

In the current issue of Science magazine, Andrew Oswald and Stephen Wu ranked states by the happiness of their residents, finding that people are happiest in Louisiana and least happy in New York.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email