so happy i could die

When the advocates of happiness make their case they invariably warn of rising rates of depression and suicide in our society. But societies that are happier overall don't necessarily have lower suicide rates. Indeed, quite the opposite.

Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics from Warwick University, has teamed up with colleagues from the US to produce a study into the causes of suicide, using data from countries all over the world. Their report reaches an unexpected conclusion: the happiest places tend to have the highest suicide rates.

The paper, entitled "Dark Contrasts: The Paradox of High Rates of Suicide in Happy Places", establishes that a range of countries with relatively high happiness rates - including Switzerland, Denmark, Canada, Iceland, and the US - also have unusually high rates of suicide. It investigates this paradox further by comparing different regions of the U.S to each other (this has the advantage of stripping out the kind of cultural differences that exist between countries). This is from the paper's press release:

Comparing U.S. states in this way produced the same result. States with people who are generally more satisfied with their lives tended to have higher suicide rates than those with lower average levels of life satisfaction. For example, the raw data showed that Utah is ranked first in life-satisfaction, but has the 9th highest suicide rate. Meanwhile, New York was ranked 45th in life satisfaction, yet had the lowest suicide rate in the country.

The researchers then also tried to make their comparison between States even fairer and yet more homogeneous by adjusting for clear population differences between the states including age, gender, race, education, income, marital status and employment status. This still produced a very strong correlation between happiness levels and suicide rates although some states shifted their positions slightly. Hawaii then ranks second in adjusted average life satisfaction but has the fifth highest suicide rate in the country. At the other end of the spectrum, for example, New Jersey ranked near the bottom in adjusted life satisfaction (47th) and had one of the lowest adjusted suicide risks (coincidentally, also the 47th highest rate).

(Not sure if the New Jersey tourist board can do something with that.)

So why should this be the case? That's hard to answer conclusively. But the hypothesis of the researchers is that it's to do with the way that human beings measure themselves against each other; we rely on relative comparisons to assess our own happiness. So in a society where more people are happy, the person feeling a little discontented is likely to feel more miserable than she would if she were surrounded by glum faces. If you live in an unhappy society, at least when you're unhappy you feel a sense of solidarity with those around you.

This is a big problem for Happiness advocates. If you spread the idea that everyone deserves happiness - that everyone should be happy - you risk increasing the misery of those who just aren't feeling it.

Link to paper.

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Comments

[Hal]

The messages that local culture sends people about how happy they're supposed to be may matter more than how happy people actually are. More than one former Texan in New York says that in Texas one is supposed to smile in all social situations and act as if life is good at all times. This is not the same as being happy. In New York, by contrast, we can make a sport of complaining about the crowded subways and the people riding them, the tourists in midtown, the chain drugstores, whatever. Not having the same social pressure as Texans to act happy is a great relief. In fact, it often makes me happy.

[Z]

As a soldier, I know that having others around you who are experiencing the same hardships is essential for getting by. If I was the only one going through all of the shit I put up with then I would probably conclude that the world was unfairly stacked against me, and suicide would seem like a bright choice. But when everyone around you is miserable, you feel less personally victimized, and so are less likely to despair, it seems.

What this shows is that suicidal thoughts are not simply brought on by misery or stress exceeding ones coping mechanisms, as is often claimed. A community measure of how one should feel plays a factor too. This then, explains the phenomena of rich spoiled kids offing themselves at a much higher rate than poor kids with low social capital. It's not just that the privileged have less developed coping mechanisms (although they probably do). It's also that the privileged are conditioned to think that they deserve to be quite happy, since everyone around them is, relatively, happy.

[Marbury]

Thanks Hal and Z, those are great, thought-provoking comments.

[simon kane]

Are the privileged also more isolated? May population density be a factor? Soldiers live communally.
I'm not convinced by the idea that if surrounded by those happier than us we simply eliminate ourselves as a forfeit, but I do think it's likely that the amount we have to put up with other people could simultaneously hamper both our happiness and the solipsistic urge to cut all ties with existence.