Centro ANTARES

Happiness and well-being

Confronted with a European crisis with no solution in sight, Europeans worry about their economic present and future.

Who's happy in Europe? If you take a look at the Eurobarometer results on life satisfaction over the last ten years, you will see that the share of Germans satisfied with their life has increased at the same pace and intensity as the share of Italians not satisfied with their life.

This "spread" of happiness is (roughly speaking in consideration of percentage points' difference) four times larger than the financial spread.

Can we assume that happiness always corresponds to the economic situation of individuals and countries?

Yes, but with a cautionary note. Happiness is not well-being. As Nobel prize laureate Daniel Kahneman has recently reminded us in his book, happiness implies an act of remembering and calls into action the more rational part of our cognitive system; well-being is more related with experiences. Surveys with large and reliable samples have shown over the years that money gives happiness, but cannot buy well-being, or at least cannot increase the possibility to buy more well-being over a certain income threshold. It's the Kahneman's update and revision of the Easterlin paradox.

The little big paradox of our times of "reduced expectations" is that, following the happiness/well-being distinction, we could be in a better position to appreciate things and situations that bring well-being, but in terms of life satisfaction, with unemployment looming large, how can we be happy?