Arthur Brooks seems to be all over the place these days decoding what social science research has found out about happiness.
In the City Journal, he writes that Free People Are Happy People.
Freedom and happiness are highly correlated, then; even more significant, several studies have shown that freedom causes happiness.
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Pundits and politicians on the left often tell us that a free economy makes for an unhappy population:... But for most people, it turns out, that isn’t true.
To begin with, those who favor less government intervention in our economic affairs are happier than those who favor more.
Religious freedom—known to the Founding Fathers as the “first liberty”—probably brings happiness, too.
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Many of the happiest people in America achieve their happiness through faith. When asked in the 2000 GSS about the experiences that made them feel the most free, about 11 percent of adults put religious and spiritual experiences at the top of the list.
Brooks reports that religious people who practice their faith are twice as likely to say they are happy than secular people. The psychological well-being that religion can promote is also linked to better physical health.
Brooks, the author of the new published Gross National Happiness writes
According to hundreds of reliable surveys of thousands of people across the land, happy people increase our prosperity and strengthen our communities. They make better citizens--and better citizens are vital to making our nation healthy and strong. Happiness, in other words, is important for America. So when I chanced upon data a couple of years ago saying that certain Americans were living in a manner that facilitated happiness--while others were not--I jumped on it.
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I had always thought that marching to the beat of my own drummer and making up my own values as I went along were the right things to do, and that traditional values, to put it bluntly, were for suckers.
Turns out that I was in for some surprises.
In Why We're Happy, he lays out the top five happiness predictors
1. Faith
2. Work
3. Marriage and Family
4. Charity
5. Freedom
