Inequality Makes Rich Liberals Unhappy

The Easterlin paradox, as we noted yesterday, finds that above the midpoint, more money does not make people happier.

The complementary macrosocial finding is that inequality in society is not closely correlated with overall happiness. Nor are poor people normally unhappy in unequal societies. Indeed, some of the happiest people in the world, according to Carol Graham's studies in Happiness Around the World, are in sub-Saharan Africa, which are very unequal societies.

Yet happiness studies at the macrosocial level almost always have a big concern with opposing inequality. Where does this concern come from, if not from the actual data on happiness?

From the guilt of rich liberals, especially in rich societies, Graham concludes.

The Easterlin Paradox - The Foundation of Macro Happiness Studies

I am working my way through the mountain of research in the past generation on happiness. Half of it is micro work done by psychologists. The other half are macro studies done by economists. We sociologists have some catching up to do.

The foundation of macro happiness studies is Richard Easterlin's finding that richer nations are happier, but the richer people in them are not.

When you plot income against happiness, the curve goes up steeply to about the mid-point, then flattens out, kind of like a small r. This curve is the same for individuals within a nation, and for nations as a whole.

Some researchers I respect say that there isn't really a paradox, because the curve does not flatten (as much) if you measure percentage change in income, instead of absolute increases. I will ponder over those claims hereafter.

The basic finding of the Easterlin paradox makes sense to me. From poor to average, more money really does make your life easier and opens other options. From middle to the Gatesian stratosphere of income, though, more money does not add big increments of happiness. Richer nations are happier because the people who are relatively poor live decent lives, materially, whereas the poorest people in desperately poor nations are really badly off.

Happiness Correlates Hold in Non-Rich Countries, Too

Getting richer doesn't make you happier above the average income. Chronic health problems make you unhappy. Unemployment makes you unhappy. Divorce makes you unhappy. These are strong findings from across the rich countries of the world.

Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World, added her own study of Latin America, Russia, and Afghanistan, and collected other studies of sub-Saharan Africa. The result: the same relationships hold in middle-income and poor countries, too.

The happiest people were sub-Saharan Africans, among the poorest people on earth. Their absolute wealth is low, but personal happiness is tied more to having enough to live, and then having good family and friend relationships.

Obesity as a Poverty Marker - for White People

Many Americans are fat, including many poor Americans. Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World, reports that poor white Americans feel worse about being fat than poor black or Hispanic Americans do. Her reading of this fact: poor white Americans think other people see their being fat as marking them off as poor, whereas being fat is spread among all classes of black and Hispanic Americans enough that obesity is not taken as a poverty marker.

Blocked Ascendants and Frustrated Achievers

Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Unhappy Millionaires, found that the poor people who stay poor are often happier than people who are rising out of poverty. She notes, as many happiness researchers have found, that happiness rises as income rises up to a midpoint, then flattens out at the higher levels of income. In her surveys of many developing countries, Graham found that the least happy were those she called "frustrated achievers." These are people who are rising educationally and economically, but are stymied. In developing economies there are many people with more education and ambition than the economy can absorb. They have a broader view of the possibilities of advancement than the peasants, so it bothers them more than they can't reach their (new) goals.

I was reminded of one of the interesting ideas that came of the massive studies of worldwide religious fundamentalism that Martin Marty and his associates conducted in the 1990s. They found that a fertile field from which to recruit fundamentalists was among people with modern education who were nonetheless unable to find a place in the modern sector of the economy. The Marty team called such people "blocked ascendants."

It makes sense to me that frustrated achievers and blocked ascendants - who appear to be the same people - are both unhappy with the way their society is organized, and open to a suggestion that things would be better if society were restored to a previous, God-given order. I don't know if fundamentalism makes people any happier, but it would make their lives feel more meaningful.

The New Form of Government for the PC(USA) is Still a Good Idea

A new Form of Government was proposed for the Presbyterian Church (USA) at the General Assembly in 2008. Predictably, it was sent back to the church for study until the next assembly, which meets in July. I think the great majority of Presbyterians have no idea that a new Form of Government has been proposed, nor that there is a consequential debate going on. This is pure polity wonk material. As a polity wonk, I feel a duty to weigh in.

The Presbyterian Church, like every big Christian denomination, has always had a range of theological views and religious practices under the big tent of the Bible and traditional theology. Presbyterians takes a specifically Reformed approach, which has some particular consequences, but this picture is true of every large denomination.

For the past long generation in the PC(USA) we have had a continuous theological and cultural struggle. One important front in this struggle has been over the precise wording of the Form of Government (FOG), the portion of the church's constitution that regulates who does what in the church. We don't usually have fights over the part of the constitution about how worship services are to be conducted. While we have a few large disagreements about what we confess theologically, the church made the portion of the constitution that is full of theological confessions merely advisory in the 1960s. So, ever since then, nearly all fights have been about the Form of Government. As a result, the FOG has grown from a short, practical set of regs that commissioners brought to presbytery meetings in their breast pocket, to a fat rulebook.

The idea behind the new Form of Government was to make the denomination-wide FOG a slimmer set of general operating principles. The governing bodies of the church - the local sessions, the presbyteries, the synods, and the General Assembly - would create their own manuals of operations within the general constitution. The different governing bodies could be a little different from one another. The big principles of the church would apply to all. That way, the church would not have to spend every single assembly fighting over amending the by-laws to suit one side of the culture war or the other.

In the upcoming assembly there are a few overtures to shelve the nFOG. The ground of their objection is that, in the words of Central Washington Presbytery,

the proposed changes to the Constitution of the PC(USA) are so vast and foundational, that they are not simply changes to our current communion, but would go so far as to functionally constitute the creation of a new denomination. As such, we believe that many who have taken ordination vows to a vastly different constitution would no longer believe that their vows were still in force. We believe the potential chaos of both intentional changes and unintended, unforeseen consequences will not serve to advance the mission of the church and will only escalate the level of strife and distrust that already exists.

They object to nFOG because it might have unforeseen consequences. That is true. That is true of every change to the constitution.

They object to nFOG because it would let presbyteries have somewhat different rules from one another. That is also true. But that has always been true of the Presbyterian Church, and every large denomination that has ever existed.

The great gain of adopting the new Form of Government is that the inevitable diversity within the Presbyterian Church could be contained within the overall order of the church, while allowing some variation at the local level. The attempt made by both extremes in the church's culture war to force everyone to comply exactly with the views of one wing or the other damages the church unnecessarily. They force the other extreme out. Worse, the endless skirmishing so disheartens the vast loyalist center that they just withdraw from the denomination altogether.

End the war. Allow local variation. Pass the FOG.

Derby Day!

Today is the central ritual of Kentucky's civil religion, the Kentucky Derby.

My favorite part of the whole ritual pageant is the parade of Derby hats. An excellent array can be found here.

I favor the comparatively constrained classics.

I understand that there is also a horse race involved.

Surrogates Beat Imagination to Predict How Something Will Make Us Feel

I have been reading Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. This is not really about happiness, but about the many ways in which memory and imagination mislead us. If we want to know how some choice might make us feel, we are not likely to get it right if we go by either how we remember it made us feel in the past, nor how we imagine it might make us feel in the future. Instead, our best source of how something would make us feel is how it is making someone else feel in the present. We are better off, in other words, treating other people's feelings as a surrogate for what our own would be.

However, we resist relying on stranger's feelings to predict our own because they are not us. The best line in the book, I think, is this: “if you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” We tend to think ourselves more unusual than we really are - both better and worse.

Each year I find that this is a hard lesson to teach students who are trying to develop a sociological imagination. Most people are average and normal. That means most of my students are average and normal. That means I am average and normal in most things. Of course there are exceptional points. But not as many as we think. The belief that we are unusually unusual is an average and normal belief.

As I often tell Mrs. G., I am a regular guy. She and the kids deny it. That is normal.

The Daily Sex Challenge

A British couple, seven years married, set themselves a challenge of daily sex for a month. They were returning to the practice of their first years of marriage, which they had drifted away from. However, they found that the daily sex experiment was harder to stick to than they thought it would be - normal life raised many hurdles. Still, they also found that it brought them closer together, made them more attentive to one another, and they looked and felt better.

What struck me about this experiment was that they found it so challenging without children. One weekend they babysat their small nieces, who wished to stay up and be entertained. When she fussed to her sister that the kids would cramp their challenge, the mother of the small girls simply said "welcome to my world."

The Kavanaghs ended the account of their experiment in the Daily Mail by saying they were glad they did it, never felt closer, and wanted to start a family.

Feeling That Your Spouse Supports You and Is Pulling In the Same Direction Keeps You Healthier

There is a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine by Tara Parker-Pope about how a happy marriage helps you stay healthy.

One of the several findings she reports is that women, especially, benefit from the sense that their spouse is present and feeling emotionally supportive. For men the cue is a little different: they like to feel that their spouse is working with them on the same project, not fighting to control them or the relationship.

When Babies Cry it Out, Are They Really Learning Helplessness?

When our eldest was a baby we tried the advice in some parenting books to let her "cry it out" and learn to just go to sleep without being held. I was able to stand her crying for about 15 minutes, uttered an expletive that became famous in the family, and picked her up. End of experiment.

Now Penelope Leach, the favorite parenting advice source of the knowledge class, argues that crying it out is so stressful to babies that they can be scarred, even brain-damaged, by the high cortisol levels this experience induces.

I will be interested in how the scientific argument develops. As for me and my house, we will hold the baby to sleep. More fun for us, too, in the long run.

Proud to be "Trustworthy"

My kind of science. Ish.

Disney's Weenie

Eminent sociologist George Ritzer gave a plenary address to the Southern Sociological Society this week on consumption and hyperconsumption. I learned a wonderful new term from this address: a weenie. Walt Disney, a genius at marketing, thought that his theme parks needed a tall, striking visual magnet to draw visitors along through the park. And as they were drawn along toward the magnet, their path could be lined with stores selling them stuff. He called these visual magnets "weenies." Cinderella's Castle is the great Disney weenie.

Ritzer said the principle of the weenie has not been lost on brand makers around the world. He showed a series of images of the arms race of tallest buildings in the world, as they have grown increasingly outsized. The biggest weenie of them all is also the most ridiculous: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It is, indeed, the world's tallest building - a Chrysler Building stacked on top of an Empire State Building. It is also, Ritzer said, empty, and not in use except for the observation tower. The Burj Khalifa is the perfect emblem of both the weenie and of hyperconsumption.

Strong Marriages Fight Risk

Tonight I heard Angela O'Rand's very interesting presidential address at the Southern Sociological Society. Her topic was "The Devolution of Risk and the Changing Life Course." What she means by devolution of risk is that we used to have a more orderly life course, but now that order has devolved into a thousand paths and no certain route. This uncertainty has increased our risk.

O'Rand cited "ephemeral families" as one of the devolving institutions that increases risk. She cited most other institutions, too, especially economic ones.

She is right that the family life course can't be taken for granted as it once was. But I don't think we need to accept that families simply are ephemeral and have no order. Of all of the devolving institutions in social life, families are the ones we have the most capacity to make for ourselves. The economy, the state, the educational system, even religious institutions may be largely beyond our control. But we can make our own marriages and family life stronger, more orderly, and less risky.

Black Men in Prison Undermine Black Marriage

The Economist has a good story on how the high prison rate for black men contributes to the abysmally low black marriage rate. They cite a study by Kerwin Kofi Charles and Ming Ching Luoh which estimates that for every 1% increase in the black male incarceration rate, there is a 2.4% reduction in the number of black women who ever marry.

Nisa Muhammad, promoter of the annual Black Marriage Day, urges educated black women to be more open to marriage with blue-collar black men. I think this is a very sensible idea.

Moreover, middle-class black boys are not likely to commit crimes, but are likely to become educated, middle-class black men. They have their pick of educated black women, who outnumber their male counterparts by about 40%.

The Economist concludes that "the simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up fewer black men for non-violent offences."

I disagree. The simplest way to help the black family would be for fewer black men to commit crimes in the first place.

"Day Fratting" a New Term for an Old Bad Idea

Every year there seems to be a story in which college women who get drunk and fool around with guys discover that this is not satisfying, leaves them feeling empty, and does not lead to serious romance.

This year's edition brings a new term: day fratting:

Imbibing for hours in the front yard of a fraternity. Day fratting can result in "afternoon delight," noncommittal physical activity between two people that can include casual sex.

Planned Parenthood is Unnatural - and a Good Thing

In the family life class this week we are discussing Promises I Can Keep, a fine study of poor single mothers. It is so hard for my class of bourgeois people who plan their entire lives to comprehend having a baby at 15. What is harder to comprehend is that most of the mothers said that their babies were neither planned nor unplanned. Living a life without planning is through-the-looking-glass for people like my students (and me) for whom deferred gratification is one of the top seven habits of our fairly effective lives.

Which led to an interesting discussion about which way of viewing the world - planning or not planning parenthood - was the odder. From the social world of the college-going class, not planning is odd. But we realized that from the perspective of most people in the world, and most people who have ever lived, the idea of tightly controlled and limited fertility is supremely odd.

Planning parenthood is very unnatural. Planning parenthood is a great achievement of civilization. Civilization, though, has developed one crucial brake and help that the poor single mothers we are studying skipped: get married first.

Competing Second Comings: Christ vs. The Caliphate

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a study of religious life in sub-Saharan Africa - the most religious region in the world.

One of the driving facts of religious life in Africa is the competition between Islam and Christianity. The report details many elements of this competition, some of which are actually quite encouraging.

One comparison was new to me. They asked Christians "do you believe Jesus will return in your lifetime?" The median answer among the 19 sub-Saharan Africa countries was 61%. This question is often asked of Christians in this country, and usually produces high percentages of "yes" answers among conservative Christians of all denominations.

Pew asked a parallel question that I had not seen in a survey before. They asked Muslims "do you expect the caliphate to be re-established in your lifetime?" The median answer among the 19 sub-Saharan African countries was 52%.

Theologically, these two answers are not really parallel - the return of God Incarnate to establish a new heaven and earth is metaphysically a bigger deal than the restoration of the earthly rule of Muslims. Sociologically, though, I think the two ideas are parallel for many people. The second coming of Christ will, many Christians think, mean a golden age for Christians; the second coming of the caliphate will, many Muslims think, mean a golden age for Muslims.

Moreover, I think the competition between Islam and Christianity in Africa has probably spurred on the hope of both kinds of second comings as a way of resolving the competition.

Making an X

A friend posted this Facebook status, with responses.

I. wonders what made her twin boys think it would be a good idea to go in the front door (upon arriving home from MDO), through the house, out the back door, and then pee on the deck - at the same time. A tree would be ok, I guess, but the deck? Sigh.

G.
That's just a boy for ya! At least it WAS outside....

I.
True, G.! What's even funnier is when they think they must go at the same time (in the same potty) inside and laugh hysterically because, in their words, ..."We made a X!!"

Williams Syndrome Kids Show That Racism Requires Social Fear

Williams Syndrome is a genetic defect that deprives children of the ability to read social danger signals. They are at higher risk of being victimized.

The silver lining of this risk, though, is that they do not have social anxiety. Little kids with a normal genetic configuration strongly favor their own race at three years old. Williams syndrome kids do not. Researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg concluded that racism requires social fear.

Equally interesting, I think, is that Williams syndrome kids are just as likely as other kids to see strong differences between males and females.