Happiness, Economics and Politics. towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach

Review of Amitava Krishna Dutt and Benjamin Radcliff(eds.), Happiness, Economics and Politics. Towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009, 362 pp.This volume presents a unique and interesting study of happiness from both economic and political perspectives. It offers an overview of contemporary research on the emergent field of happiness and tackles issues such as the history and conceptualization of happiness, the effects of consumption, income growth, inequality, discrimination, democracy, the nature of government policies and labour organization on happiness. The ways in which economic and political factors both separately and interactively affect the quality of human life are observed, demonstrating the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to the field. The sixteen papers of the volume originate from the conference New Directions in the Study of Happiness: US and International Perspectives held at the University of Notre Dame during October 22-24, 2006.The authors start from the self-evident truth that it is very difficult to define happiness. Psychologists, theologists and economists have tried to give meaning to the notion of happiness, but being such a complex, abstract concept it has never been an easy task. Darrin McMahon, a historian, begins with a captivating view on how happiness has been perceived and how the concept of happiness has evolved over time. McMahon points out that until the 18th century people did not think of happiness as a worldly experience occurring during one's lifetime, but more as a condition of the future or another dimension such as Heaven (p. 27). Starting from Aristotle, for whom happiness was a prize to be won over during a lifetime of good, virtuous behaviour, McMahon shows that most religions preached, for a long time, that true happiness was something one could achieve in the afterlife after uniting with God. It was during the Enlightment era, with the weakening of religion on everyday life, that happiness started being perceived as the human being's end and goal (p. 29) which is closer to today's view.Looking at theories and methodological directions within the concerns to measure or mismeasure happiness, Ong argues that happiness and well-being cannot be represented from one dimension only and that researchers should approach happiness from a multidisciplinary angle, examining both the eudaimonic and hedonic indicators of happiness to achieve a more thorough understanding of human happiness and well-being. What is obvious from McMahon's and Ong's contributions is that caution is necessary when dealing with conventional, mainstream indicators based on surveys of happiness or life satisfaction. Conventional surveys asking people to decide on a certain scale how happy they are or how satisfied they are with their lives implicitly rely on the respondents' personal understanding of the concepts which leads to the conclusion that often different results are based on a different definition of the terms and should be analyzed before being used in research.The basic assumption of economists interested in whether happiness increases when people consume more goods and services is not entirely justified by empirical research. The studies presented in the volume look at Happiness when temptation overwhelms willpower (A. Stutzer), a cross-disciplinary investigation in the fields of economics and psychology contributing to the economics of happiness; Happiness and the relative consumption hypothesis (A. …