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The Politics Of Happiness: What Government Can Learn From The New Research On Well-Being (2010)

by Derek Bok(Favorite Author)

3.36 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0691144893 (ISBN13: 9780691144894)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Princeton University Press

review 1: Bok's Politics of Happiness examines a new field of research, which seeks to study the happiness of citizens across nations and across time, and how this kind of research can benefit law-makers. First, he describes happiness research such as the different ways to survey individuals on their level of happiness. Then he discusses what happiness research have found, in terms of what studies have shown effect happiness the most. This naturally leads to the question of the role of government. Should the government seek to improve the mental well-being of its citizens? Several arguments for and against are presented. Bok first sheds light on the debate of the conflict between well-being and economic growth. Many argue that the government should focus mainly on economic growth, a... morend this opinion seems to coincide with most voters and thus politicians. If the government focuses too much on social welfare, it will not have the resources to sustain or grow the economy and citizens will not have the opportunity to even pursue happiness on their own. However, happiness research has shown that Americans have not experienced an increase in well-being despite an increase in economic growth. If an increase of growth has not had an impact on well-being, what is the point of continued effort towards this goal? This theme is reiterated throughout the book. Income inequality is another area of concern for many Americans in recent years, clearly after this book was written. Bok presents the issue as non-important to most Americans. He does, however, explain how most Americans are misinformed on the reality of equal opportunities and social mobility. He explains how increased education could change this, and with recent issues such as the bailout which led to the Occupy movement, perhaps Americans are more educated. Nonetheless, this portion of the book focuses on different forms of inequality, including income inequality, lack of equal opportunity, and political equality. He forms a strong argument for promoting political equality by improving equality in campaign financing, improving education to promote civic engagement, and improving equal opportunity in education. He argues against income redistribution, since americans are not generally happier with increased incomes. With this argument, he makes some bold claims that are not backed up with substantial reasoning or evidence. For example, he argues that improving educational opportunity would be much more beneficial to narrowing the income gap because of increased social mobility. This is not entirely logical since increased social mobility does nothing to improve conditions of lower classes. However, the overall message of, just giving people more money cannot fix all the problems that lead to hardship or unhappiness, is sensical. Increased educational opportunity can, as he mentioned earlier, give all citizens despite their income level a voice in government, which would most likely lead to more social welfare programs that would improve equality. The next section of the book is focused on how much the government can or should focus on some of the areas that wellness researchers have found greatly impact a person's happiness: financial hardship, marriage and families, and mental and physical suffering. According to Bok, the government can do a great deal more than it is now to relieve suffering, improve relationships, and improve job security for its citizens. He concludes each of these topics with a skeptical attitude. Giving the government authority to decide what's best for its citizens is not the best approach. Educating more civic citizens would likely have better results so they could decide for themselves what kind of improvements need to be made. Which leads to the next topic: education. Improving education to produce more well rounded, civically engaged citizens is the next step Bok suggests for educating Americans. The education system is still stuck in the past and focuses on job training and specialization. Education should, according to Bok, go beyond this to improve the lives of students. Most students in the U.S. list money as a primarily goal for education. Yet, happiness researchers have found that those who list increased wealth as a main goal in life are more unhappy than those who do not. Bok argues that improving education to broaden its approach, no longer only focusing on job training and economic growth, would improve the lives of citizens. Next is the discussion on quality of government. Why is there such disappointment in the U.S. government despite overall improvement in government and progress in many important policy areas. Again, he suggests improved education, through the education system and the media. Diminishing such pessimism could increase happiness in citizens. Bok suggests general improvements that the government could make to make larger strides in policy making, to catch us up to other modern countries, such as restructuring the government to reduce gridlock. Overall though, he still advocates for an improved education system. Lastly, he concludes with his overall theme that society has advanced to such a degree that the goals of government are now beyond that of just ensuring basic needs for its population. It can now look beyond economic growth which at one time ensured that there were enough resources for the population. Now it can ensure that all citizens have a basic standard of living and can look towards new goals such as emotional well being. How this can be done must be decided by the population as a whole. The government will not make strides in this area if constituents of politicians do not demand it, thus educating the population is most important to advance society in this direction.
review 2: Interesting research data on what really makes people happy (family situation, education, financial wealth, health conditions, etc). Also offers some ideas on what governments could do to increase happiness in its citizens, but apparently it's not a priority for the US. The academic report writing style doesn't make this a fascinating read, but it's still a good one-source summary of many reports and studies available out there. less

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