March 7, 2011, 11:58 am
The Happiest Man in America, Annotated
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Courtesy of Alvin Wong
The (theoretically) happiest person in America, Alvin Wong, with his wife, Trudy Schandler-Wong. Sunday’s Week in Review featured a package on a subject that is much beloved by Economix: happiness.
Gallup has been compiling the 2010 results of its daily Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey, which asked 1,000 randomly selected Americans daily about their quality of life: whether they’re smiling, exercising, eating their vegetables, enjoying their jobs, feeling safe walking home alone at night and so on.
The results are put into an index that tries to measure the elements of “the good life,” and is an alternative to other more traditional (and more limited) measures of a country’s development, like unemployment or gross domestic product. After all, the ultimate goal of public policy is to give people better lives, not just to produce more stuff, which is why economists are increasingly turning to measures like Gallup’s.
Gallup also asks its survey respondents other questions about their demographics, like age, gender and religion. Using the data, we asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite of the happiest person in America, based on what demographic characteristics are most closely correlated with higher levels of well-being. Gallup said that the happiest person would be: male, Asian-American, a religious Jew, self-employed, living in Hawaii, married, has children, receiving a household income of at least $120,000.
Given this, I figured I’d write a profile of a fictional person, whom I nicknamed Moishe Chang (or sometimes Deng Xiao Shapiro). But then, lo and behold, it turned out that a real person fulfilling all these requirements actually exists! His name is Alvin Wong, and he lives in Honolulu. He says he is indeed a very happy person.
Here’s a breakdown of how each of Mr. Wong’s attributes contributes to happiness, with links to some of our previous coverage on these correlations. But remember, as always, correlation is not necessarily causation.
RELIGION: On average, Jews have higher levels of well-being than their counterparts of every other major faith in America. Muslims have the lowest levels of well-being. In between, from happiest to least happy, are Mormons, atheists/agnostics, Roman Catholics, “other non-Christians” and then Protestants. For people of most religions, greater levels of religiosity (like frequent church or synagogue attendance) are associated with higher levels of happiness.
GENDER: Men, on average, report slightly higher levels of well-being, a score of 67 on a scale of 0 to 100, compared to women’s average score of 66.6. This modest gap is mostly because women score much lower on the physical health index, as measured by the presence of illnesses and various other physical ailments like neck pain and low energy.
RACE: Asians have by far the highest levels of well-being, followed by whites, Hispanics, blacks and then everybody who doesn’t fit into those defined categories. Asians beat out their non-Asian counterparts on five out of the six well-being sub-indexes: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors and basic access to things like food and shelter. The one category where whites beat them, but just barely, is work environment.
MARITAL STATUS: Married people have far and away the highest happiness levels. The biggest differential between married people and non-married people is in the work environment index. Across the entire index, married people are followed in happiness by singletons; people with domestic partners and people who have been widowed (these two categories have equal levels of well-being); those who are divorced; and finally, people who are married but separated.
CHILDREN: People who have children are slightly happier than people who don’t.
AGE: Seniors — those age 65 and older — rank as the happiest, followed by Americans under 30. The people in the middle —the ones with mortgages, teenagers, car loans and midlife crises — are perhaps understandably the ones who are more miserable.
INCOME: Income tracks very neatly with well-being. People earning under $12,000 annually lead the least happy lives, and the more money they make, generally speaking, the better off they are emotionally and physically. This probably makes sense when you consider what goes into the index, things like good health and access to basic needs like food and shelter. You can’t afford to lead “the good life” if you can’t afford much at all.
GEOGRAPHY: In 2010 Hawaii topped the well-being list, and West Virginia was at the bottom. If you want to zoom in further, you can see well-being rates by Congressional district. California’s 14th district, one of the highest-income districts in the country that also happens to include most of Silicon Valley, ranks at the top. Michigan’s 13th district, an area of high unemployment that covers parts of Detroit and the wealthier Gross Pointe suburbs, is at the very bottom of the barrel.
EMPLOYMENT: Americans who own their own businesses were the happiest on average in 2010, followed by professionals. The least happy are transportation and manufacturing workers.
HEIGHT: Randy Newman was right: Taller people are generally happier.
The Happiest Man in America, Annotated
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Courtesy of Alvin Wong
The (theoretically) happiest person in America, Alvin Wong, with his wife, Trudy Schandler-Wong. Sunday’s Week in Review featured a package on a subject that is much beloved by Economix: happiness.
Gallup has been compiling the 2010 results of its daily Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey, which asked 1,000 randomly selected Americans daily about their quality of life: whether they’re smiling, exercising, eating their vegetables, enjoying their jobs, feeling safe walking home alone at night and so on.
The results are put into an index that tries to measure the elements of “the good life,” and is an alternative to other more traditional (and more limited) measures of a country’s development, like unemployment or gross domestic product. After all, the ultimate goal of public policy is to give people better lives, not just to produce more stuff, which is why economists are increasingly turning to measures like Gallup’s.
Gallup also asks its survey respondents other questions about their demographics, like age, gender and religion. Using the data, we asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite of the happiest person in America, based on what demographic characteristics are most closely correlated with higher levels of well-being. Gallup said that the happiest person would be: male, Asian-American, a religious Jew, self-employed, living in Hawaii, married, has children, receiving a household income of at least $120,000.
Given this, I figured I’d write a profile of a fictional person, whom I nicknamed Moishe Chang (or sometimes Deng Xiao Shapiro). But then, lo and behold, it turned out that a real person fulfilling all these requirements actually exists! His name is Alvin Wong, and he lives in Honolulu. He says he is indeed a very happy person.
Here’s a breakdown of how each of Mr. Wong’s attributes contributes to happiness, with links to some of our previous coverage on these correlations. But remember, as always, correlation is not necessarily causation.
RELIGION: On average, Jews have higher levels of well-being than their counterparts of every other major faith in America. Muslims have the lowest levels of well-being. In between, from happiest to least happy, are Mormons, atheists/agnostics, Roman Catholics, “other non-Christians” and then Protestants. For people of most religions, greater levels of religiosity (like frequent church or synagogue attendance) are associated with higher levels of happiness.
GENDER: Men, on average, report slightly higher levels of well-being, a score of 67 on a scale of 0 to 100, compared to women’s average score of 66.6. This modest gap is mostly because women score much lower on the physical health index, as measured by the presence of illnesses and various other physical ailments like neck pain and low energy.
RACE: Asians have by far the highest levels of well-being, followed by whites, Hispanics, blacks and then everybody who doesn’t fit into those defined categories. Asians beat out their non-Asian counterparts on five out of the six well-being sub-indexes: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors and basic access to things like food and shelter. The one category where whites beat them, but just barely, is work environment.
MARITAL STATUS: Married people have far and away the highest happiness levels. The biggest differential between married people and non-married people is in the work environment index. Across the entire index, married people are followed in happiness by singletons; people with domestic partners and people who have been widowed (these two categories have equal levels of well-being); those who are divorced; and finally, people who are married but separated.
CHILDREN: People who have children are slightly happier than people who don’t.
AGE: Seniors — those age 65 and older — rank as the happiest, followed by Americans under 30. The people in the middle —the ones with mortgages, teenagers, car loans and midlife crises — are perhaps understandably the ones who are more miserable.
INCOME: Income tracks very neatly with well-being. People earning under $12,000 annually lead the least happy lives, and the more money they make, generally speaking, the better off they are emotionally and physically. This probably makes sense when you consider what goes into the index, things like good health and access to basic needs like food and shelter. You can’t afford to lead “the good life” if you can’t afford much at all.
GEOGRAPHY: In 2010 Hawaii topped the well-being list, and West Virginia was at the bottom. If you want to zoom in further, you can see well-being rates by Congressional district. California’s 14th district, one of the highest-income districts in the country that also happens to include most of Silicon Valley, ranks at the top. Michigan’s 13th district, an area of high unemployment that covers parts of Detroit and the wealthier Gross Pointe suburbs, is at the very bottom of the barrel.
EMPLOYMENT: Americans who own their own businesses were the happiest on average in 2010, followed by professionals. The least happy are transportation and manufacturing workers.
HEIGHT: Randy Newman was right: Taller people are generally happier.
