Happiness myths

Happy Ever After: Escaping the myth of the perfect life By Paul Dolan, Penguin Random House, $40 .. .. .. .. .. ..

The introduction is a giveaway about the author’s very English views.

A Professor of Behavioural Science at London School of Economics, he talks about aspirations of social classes, and wide divisions between the “working class” and the “middle class”. I suspect in New Zealand we don’t have such clearly identified “classes”.

But we do have aspirations — to have wealth, success, marriage, family, travel, assuming these things will make us happy. He’s shattering the myths, to find what really makes us happy.

In this follow-up to his first book, Happiness By Design, he talks about three happiness factors — people’s ambition to be rich and successful, expectations to be married and have children, and to be responsible, stay healthy, be altruistic.

There are some interesting insights. Neighbours of lottery winners are more likely to go bankrupt keeping up with the Jonses. Florists are happier than lawyers. Oddly, happiness decreases as education increases. The benefits of marriage generally don’t last long.

Dolan tells us that less unequal societies are happier than those with big gaps in status and wealth. And fat lower class people shouldn’t be sneered at by the thin, posh ones as the fat ones die sooner and use fewer resources.

An easy read and some interesting theories. — Linda Thompson