[acb-hsp] Male Happiness on the Decline?

[peter altschul]

Male Happiness on the Decline? Men Less Satisfied, Less Confident 
Than Ever
  Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune Magazine July 18, 2011
  Few research papers hit a nerve like the 2009 report The 
Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.  Over the past 35 years, 
"women's happiness has declined both absolutely, and relative to 
men," Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers wrote in the American 
Economic Journal.
  Some interpreted this as an indirect indictment of the feminist 
movement, which -- the argument went -- has given women more 
freedom but left them less content.  While that was not the 
thesis of the paper's authors, the notion was debated by 
newspaper columnists ranging from social conservative Ross 
Douthat to feminists such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Ellen 
Goodman.
  Well, it turns out our deepening collective funk may not be 
gender-specific after all.  A just-published paper by Chris 
Herbst of Arizona State University concludes that American men 
and women bexperienced similar decreases in life satisfactionb 
between 1985 and 2005.
  "Both sexes witnessed comparable slippages in self-confidence, 
growing regrets about the past, and declines in virtually every 
measure of self-reported physical and mental health," he writes 
in the Journal of Economic Psychology.  His data suggests this 
rising discontent holds true "regardless of gender, age, marital 
status and educational attainment." While this trend toward 
increased dissatisfaction has gradually become less severe, he 
reports it has leveled off more for females than for males.  As a 
result, "men's well-being in recent years has begun to fall more 
rapidly than that for women," he writes.
  These different results are largely a matter of using different 
data sets.
  Stevenson and Wolfers primarily used data from the General 
Social Survey, while Herbst uses the results of the annual DDB 
Needham Life Style Survey.  This annual survey of approximately 
3,500 Americans, which focuses on consumer habits, "also contains 
a large number of items on subjective well-being, ranging from 
life satisfaction and self-confidence to various measures of 
physical and mental health," he notes.
  Where the GSS survey asks participants their level of 
happiness, the Life Style Survey focuses on satisfaction.  
Specifically, participants responded to the statement "I am very 
satisfied with the way things are going in my life these days" on 
a scale of one (definitely disagree) to six (definitely agree).
  "Women do not consistently report higher levels of subjective 
well-being than men," Herbst writes.  "It also appears that men 
and women experienced similar declines in well-being over the 
last two decades.  Average life satisfaction levels for men and 
women are indistinguishable in both 1985 (male average 4.16 out 
of 6, female average 4.15) and 2005 (male and female average both 
3.99).
  "Interestingly, it appears that most of the slippage in life 
satisfaction occurred between 1985 and the early 1990's, followed 
by a considerable rebound that ended in the early 2000's," he 
adds.  "Such results suggest that macro-economic conditions play 
an important role in shaping subjective well-being."
  Herbst refined the data by looking at various subgroups, in 
such categories as age, race, marital status and employment 
status.  He found consistent declines in life satisfaction for 
each such group, with one exception: black men, "who experienced 
a statistically significant increase in well-being between 1985 
and 2005." Though he has no definitive answers, Herbst offers 
some possible reasons why the data from this survey differ from 
that used by the earlier researchers.  He doubts that the 
different wording ("happiness" versus "satisfaction") could 
account for the difference, but notes that the different way the 
data was collected -- face-to-face for the GSS survey versus by 
mail for the Life Style Survey he used -- may provide part of the 
answer.
  Wolfers and Stevenson, the authors of the 2009 study, welcomed 
this new information.  "Unfortunately, data on happiness are 
scarce," they wrote in an email.  "Thus we are all forced to draw 
inferences from whatever imperfect data are out there.  We find 
it interesting that different surveys yield somewhat different 
findings." That said, they argued these new results "need to be 
considered alongside a broad array of existing evidence pointing 
to a relative decline in the measured well-being of women in both 
the U.S.  and Europe."
  While their primary focus was the General Social Survey, "the 
standard for happiness research in the U.S.," they also 
discovered "a similar relative decline in women's well-being when 
analyzing satisfaction data from the Virginia Slims surveys," 
Wolfers and Stevenson note.  "We also find similar trends in 
nearly every European survey.  And a large-scale survey of high 
school seniors yields similar patterns."
  So, depending upon the data you look at, either half or all of 
the population is increasingly discontented.  Aside from the 
aforementioned economic factors, Herbst suggests the reasons may 
be found in the societal trends reported by Robert Putnam in his 
2000 book Bowling Alone.
  "Americans over the past several decades became increasingly 
detached from friends and family, participated in fewer social 
and civic activities, and expressed greater mistrust over 
political institutions," he writes.  "There is indeed a large 
body of evidence indicating that social connectedness -- what 
Putnam refers to as social capital -- has a powerful influence on 
self-reported health and happiness."
  "Individuals who volunteer and participate in clubs, spend a 
lot of time visiting friends, and show interest in politics are 
substantially more satisfied with life," Herbst writes.  He adds 
that as people gradually move away from such communal activities 
in favor of more solitary pursuits, and economic insecurity 
rises, a drop in life satisfaction is hardly surprising.
  "It is difficult to believe that changes of this magnitude 
could have influenced women's well-being without also influencing 
men," he adds.  Perhaps when Mick Jagger moaned that he can't get 
no satisfaction, he was speaking for us all.
  Tom Jacobs is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years 
experience at daily newspapers.  He has served as a staff writer 
for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press.  
His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago 
Tribune and Ventura County Star.
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