[Paleopsych] How not to buy happiness by Robert H. Frank, pp. 69-79
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How not to buy happiness by Robert H. Frank, pp. 69-79
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=6&tid=14403
[How it happens that the increase in conspicuous goods just balances out
the increase in inconspicuous goods is not explained. The article is a
good introduction to ideas Bob has been expounding at least since 1985. I
recommend more his _Choosing the Right Pond_, which I reviewed for _Public
Choice_, and _Passions within Reason.]
An enduring paradox in the literature on human happiness is that
although the rich are significantly happier than the poor within any
country at any moment, average happiness levels change very little as
peoples incomes rise in tandem over time.^[18]1 Richard Easterlin and
others have interpreted these observations to mean that happiness
depends on relative rather than absolute income.^[19]2
In this essay I offer a slightly different interpretation of the
evidencenamely, that gains in happiness that might have been expected
to result from growth in absolute income have not materialized because
of the ways in which people in affluent societies have generally spent
their incomes.
In effect, I wish to propose two different answers to the question
Does money buy happiness? Considerable evidence suggests that if we
use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger
houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than
before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of
certain inconspicuous goodssuch as freedom from a long commute or a
stressful jobthen the evidence paints a very different picture. The
less we spend on conspicuous consumption goods, the better we can
afford to alleviate congestion; and the more time we can devote to
family and friends, to exercise, sleep, travel, and other restorative
activities. On the best available evidence, reallocating our time and
money in these and similar ways would result in healthier, longer and
happierlives.
The main method that psychologists have used to measure human
well-being has been to conduct surveys in which they ask people
whether they are: a) very happy; b) fairly happy; or c) not
happy.^[20]3 Most respondents are willing to answer the question, and
not all of them respond very happy, even in the United States, where
one might think it advantageous to portray oneself as being very
happy. Many people describe themselves as fairly happy, and others
confess to being not happy. A given persons response tends to be
consistent from one survey to the next.
Happiness surveys and a variety of other measures employed by
psychologists are strongly correlated with observable behaviors that
we associate with well-being.^[21]4 If youre happy, for example, youre
more likely to initiate social contact with friends. Youre more likely
to respond positively when others ask you for help. Youre less likely
to suffer from psychosomatic illnessesdigestive disorders, other
stress disorders, headaches, vascular stress. Youre less likely to be
absent from work or to get involved in disputes at work. And youre
less likely to attempt suicidethe ultimate behavioral measure of
unhappiness. In sum, it appears that human happiness is a real
phenomenon that we can measure.^[22]5
How does happiness vary with income? As noted earlier, studies show
that when incomes rise for everybody, well-being doesnt change much.
Consider the example of Japan, which was a very poor country in 1960.
Between then and the late 1980s, its per capita income rose almost
four-fold, placing it among the highest in the industrialized world.
Yet the average happiness level reported by the Japanese was no higher
in 1987 than in 1960.^[23]6 They had many more washing machines, cars,
cameras, and other things than they used to, but they did not register
significant gains on the happiness scale.
The same pattern consistently shows up in other countries as well, and
thats a puzzle for economists. If getting more income doesnt make
people happier, why do they go to such lengths to get more income?
Why, for example, do tobacco company CEOs endure the public
humiliation of testifying before Congress that theres no evidence that
smoking causes serious illnesses?
It turns out that if we measure the income-happiness relationship in
another way, we get just what the economists suspected all along. When
we plot average happiness versus average income for clusters of people
in a given country at a given time, we see that rich people are in
fact much happier than poor people. In one study based on U.S. data,
for example, people in the top decile of the income distribution
averaged more than five points higher on a ten-point happiness scale
than people in the bottom decile.^[24]7
The evidence thus suggests that if income affects happiness, it is
relative, not absolute, income that matters. Some social scientists
who have pondered the significance of these patterns have concluded
that, at least for people in the worlds richest countries, no useful
purpose is served by further accumulations of wealth.^[25]8
On its face, this should be a surprising conclusion, since there are
so many seemingly useful things that having additional wealth would
enable us to do. Would we really not be any happier if, say, the
environment were a little cleaner, or if we could take a little more
time off, or even just eliminate a few of the hassles of everyday
life? In principle at least, people in wealthier countries have these
additional options, and it should surprise us that this seems to have
no measurable effect on their overall wellbeing.
There is indeed independent evidence that having more wealth would be
a good thing, provided it were spent in certain ways. The key insight
supported by this evidence is that even though we appear to adapt
quickly to across-the-board increases in our stocks of most material
goods, there are specific categories in which our capacity to adapt is
more limited. Additional spending in these categories appears to have
the greatest capacity to produce significant improvements in
well-being.
The human capacity to adapt to dramatic changes in life circumstances
is impressive. Asked to choose, most people state confidently that
they would rather be killed in an automobile accident than to survive
as a quadriplegic. And so we are not surprised to learn that severely
disabled people experience a period of devastating depression and
disorientation in the wake of their accidents. What we do not expect,
however, are the speed and extent to which many of these victims
accommodate to their new circumstances. Within a years time, many
quadriplegics report roughly the same mix of moods and emotions as
able-bodied people do.^[26]9 There is also evidence that the blind,
the retarded, and the malformed are far better adapted to the
limitations imposed by their conditions than most of us might
imagine.^[27]10
We adapt swiftly not just to losses but also to gains. Ads for the New
York State Lottery show participants fantasizing about how their lives
would change if they won. (Id buy the company and fire my boss.)
People who actually win the lottery typically report the anticipated
rush of euphoria in the weeks after their good fortune. Follow-up
studies done after several years, however, indicate that these people
are often no happier and indeed, are in some ways less happythan
before.^[28]11
In short, our extraordinary powers of adaptation appear to help
explain why absolute living standards simply may not matter much once
we escape the physical deprivations of abject poverty. This
interpretation is consistent with the impressions of people who have
lived or traveled extensively abroad, who report that the struggle to
get ahead seems to play out with much the same psychological effects
in rich societies as in those with more modest levels of
wealth.^[29]12
These observations provide grist for the mills of social critics who
are offended by the apparent wastefulness of the recent
luxury-consumption boom in the United States. What many of these
critics typically overlook, however, is that the power to adapt is a
two-edged sword. It may indeed explain why having bigger houses and
faster cars doesnt make us any happier; but if we can also adapt fully
to the seemingly unpleasant things we often have to endure to get more
money, then whats the problem? Perhaps social critics are simply
barking up the wrong tree.
I believe, however, that to conclude that absolute living standards do
not matter is a serious misreading of the evidence. What the data seem
to say is that as national income grows, people do not spend their
extra money in ways that yield significant and lasting increases in
measured satisfaction. But this still leaves two possible ways that
absolute income might matter. One is that people might have been able
to spend their money in other ways that would have made them happier,
yet for various reasons they did not, or could not, do so. I will
describe presently some evidence that strongly supports this
possibility.
The second possibility is that although measures of subjective
well-being may do a reasonably good job of tracking our experiences as
we are consciously aware of them, that may not be all that matters to
us. For example, imagine two parallel universes, one just like the one
we live in now and another in which everyones income is twice what it
is now. Suppose that in both cases you would be the median earner,
with an annual income of $100,000 in one case and $200,000 in the
other. Suppose further that you would feel equally happy in the two
universes an assumption that is consistent with the evidence discussed
thus far. And suppose, finally, that you know that people in the
richer universe would spend more to protect the environment from toxic
waste, and that this would result in healthier and longer, even if not
happier, lives for all. Can there be any question that it would be
better to live in the richer universe?
My point is that although the emerging science of subjective
well-being has much to tell us about the factors that contribute to
human satisfaction, not even its most ardent practitioners would
insist that it offers the final word. Whether growth in national
income is, or could be, a generally good thing is a question that will
have to be settled by the evidence.
And there is in fact a rich body of evidence that bears on this
question. One clear message of this evidence is that, beyond some
point, across-the-board increases in spending on many types of
material goods do not produce any lasting increment in subjective
well-being. Sticking with the parallel-universes metaphor, let us
imagine people from two societies, identical in every respect save
one: in society A everyone lives in a house with 4,000 square feet of
floor space, whereas in society B each house has only 3,000 square
feet. If the two societies were completely isolated from one another,
there is no evidence to suggest that psychologists and neuroscientists
would be able to discern any significant difference in their
respective average levels of subjective well-being. Rather, we would
expect each society to have developed its own local norm for what
constitutes adequate housing, and that people in each society would
therefore be equally satisfied with their houses and other aspects of
their lives.
Moreover, we have no reason to suppose that there would be other
important respects in which it might be preferable to be a member of
society A rather than society B. Thus the larger houses in society A
would not contribute to longer lives, more freedom from illness, or
indeed any other significant advantage over the members of society B.
Once house size achieves a given threshold, the human capacity to
adapt to further across-the-board changes in house size would appear
to be virtually complete.
Of course, it takes real resources to build larger houses. A society
that built 4,000-square-foot houses for everyone could have built
3,000-square-foot houses instead, freeing up considerable resources
that could have been used to produce something else. Hence this
central question: Are there alternative ways of spending these
resources that could have produced lasting gains in human welfare?
An affirmative answer would be logically impossible if our capacity to
adapt to every other possible change were as great as our capacity to
adapt to larger houses. As it turns out, however, our capacity to
adapt varies considerably across domains. There are some stimuli, such
as environmental noise, to which we may adapt relatively quickly at a
conscious level, yet to which our bodies continue to respond in
measurable ways even after many years of exposure. And there are
stimuli to which we never adapt over time but rather become
sensitized; various biochemical allergens are examples, but we also
see instances on a more macro scale. Thus, after several months
exposure, the office boor who initially took two weeks to annoy you
can accomplish the same feat in only seconds.
The observation that we adapt more fully to some stimuli than to
others opens the possibility that moving resources from one category
to another might yield lasting changes in well-being. Considerable
evidence bears on this possibility.
A convenient way to examine this evidence is to consider a sequence of
thought experiments in which you must choose between two hypothetical
societies. The two societies have equal wealth levels but different
spending patterns. In each case, let us again suppose that residents
of society A live in 4,000- square-foot houses while those of society
B live in 3,000-square-foot houses.
In each case, the residents of society B use the resources saved by
building smaller houses to bring about some other specific change in
their living conditions. In the first thought experiment, I will
review in detail what the evidence says about how that change would
affect the quality of their lives. In the succeeding examples, I will
simply state the relevant conclusions and refer to supporting evidence
published elsewhere.
Which would you choose: society A, whose residents have
4,000-square-foot houses and a one-hour automobile commute to work
through heavy traffic; or society B, whose residents have-3,000
square-foot houses and a fifteen-minute commute by rapid transit?
Let us suppose that the cost savings from building smaller houses are
sufficient to fund not only the construction of high-speed public
transit, but also to make the added flexibility of the automobile
available on an as-needed basis. Thus, as a resident of society B, you
need not give up your car. You can drive it to work on those days when
you need extra flexibility, or you can come and go when needed by
taxi. The only thing you and others must sacrifice to achieve the
shorter daily commute of society B is additional floor space in your
houses.
A rational person faced with this choice will want to consider the
available evidence on the costs and benefits of each alternative. As
concerns the psychological cost of living in smaller houses, the
evidence provides no reason to believe that if you and all others live
in 3,000-square-foot houses, your subjective well-being will be any
lower than if you and all others live in 4,000-square-foot houses. Of
course, if you moved from society B to society A, you might be
pleased, even excited, at first to experience the additional living
space. But we can predict that in time you would adapt and simply
consider the larger house the norm.
Someone who moved from society B to society A would also initially
experience stress from the extended commute through heavy traffic.
Over time, his consciousness of this stress might diminish. But there
is an important distinction: unlike his essentially complete
adaptation to the larger house, his adaptation to his new commuting
pattern will be only partial. Available evidence clearly shows that,
even after long periods of adjustment, most people experience the task
of navigating through heavy commuter traffic as stressful.^[30]13
In this respect, the effect of exposure to heavy traffic is similar to
the effect of exposure to noise and other irritants. Thus, even though
a large increase in background noise at a constant, steady level is
experienced as less intrusive as time passes, prolonged exposure
nonetheless produces lasting elevations in blood pressure.^[31]14 If
the noise is not only loud but intermittent, people remain conscious
of their heightened irritability even after extended periods of
adaptation, and their symptoms of central nervous system distress
become more pronounced.^[32]15 This pattern was seen, for example, in
a study of people living next to a newly opened noisy highway. Four
months after the highway opened, 21 percent of residents interviewed
said they were not annoyed by the noise, but that figure dropped to 16
percent when the same residents were interviewed a year later.^[33]16
Among the various types of noise exposure, worst of all is exposure to
sounds that are not only loud and intermittent, but also unpredictably
so. Subjects exposed to such noise in the laboratory experience not
only physiological symptoms of stress, but also behavioral symptoms.
They become less persistent in their attempts to cope with frustrating
tasks, and suffer measurable impairments in performing tasks requiring
care and attention.^[34]17
Unpredictable noise may be particularly stressful because it confronts
the subject with a loss of control. David Glass and his collaborators
confirmed this hypothesis in an ingenious experiment that exposed two
groups of subjects to a recording of loud unpredictable noises.
Whereas subjects in one group had no control over the recording,
subjects in the other group could stop the tape at any time by
flipping a switch. These subjects were told, however, that the
experimenters would prefer that they not stop the tape, and most
subjects honored this preference. Following exposure to the noise,
subjects with access to the control switch made almost 60 percent
fewer errors than the other subjects on a proofreading task and made
more than four times as many attempts to solve a difficult
puzzle.^[35]18
Commuting through heavy traffic is in many ways more like exposure to
loud unpredictable noise than to constant background noise. Delays are
difficult to predict, much less control, and one never quite gets used
to being cut off by drivers who think their time is more valuable than
anyone elses. A large scientific literature documents a multitude of
stress symptoms that result from protracted driving through heavy
traffic.
One strand in this literature focuses on the experience of urban bus
drivers, whose exposure to the stresses of heavy traffic is higher
than that of most commuters, but who have also had greater opportunity
to adapt to those stresses. A disproportionate share of the
absenteeism of urban bus drivers stems from stress-related illnesses
such as gastrointestinal problems, headaches, and anxiety.^[36]19 Many
studies have found sharply elevated rates of hypertension among bus
drivers relative to those of a variety of control groups, including a
control group of bus drivers pre-employment.^[37]20 Additional studies
have found elevations of stress hormones such as adrenaline,
noradrenaline, and cortisol in urban bus drivers.^[38]21 And one study
found elevations of adrenaline and noradrenaline to be strongly
positively correlated with the density of the traffic with which the
bus drivers had to contend.^[39]22 More than half of all urban bus
drivers retire prematurely with some form of medical
disability.^[40]23
A one-hour daily commute through heavy traffic is presumably less
stressful than operating a bus all day in an urban area. Yet this
difference is one of degree rather than of kind. Studies have shown
that the demands of commuting through heavy traffic often result in
emotional and behavioral deficits upon arrival at home or work.^[41]24
Compared to drivers who commute through low-density traffic, those who
commute through heavy traffic are more likely to report feelings of
annoyance.^[42]25 And higher levels of commuting distance, time, and
speed are significantly positively correlated with increased systolic
and diastolic blood pressure.^[43]26
The prolonged experience of commuting stress is also known to suppress
immune function and shorten longevity.^[44]27 Even daily spells in
traffic as brief as fifteen minutes have been linked to significant
elevations of blood glucose and cholesterol, and to declines in blood
coagulation timeall factors that are positively associated with
cardiovascular disease. Commuting by automobile is also positively
linked with the incidence of various cancers, especially cancer of the
lung, possibly because of heavier exposure to exhaust fumes.^[45]28
The incidence of these and other illnesses rises with the length of
commute,^[46]29 and is significantly lower among those who commute by
bus or rail,^[47]30 and lower still among noncommuters. ^[48]31
Finally, the risk of death and injury from accidents varies positively
with the length of commute and is higher for those who commute by car
than for those who commute by public transport.
In sum, there appear to be persistent and significant costs associated
with a long commute through heavy traffic. We can be confident that
neurophysiologists would find higher levels of cortisol,
norepinephrine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, and other stress hormones
in the residents of society A. No one has done the experiment to
discover whether people from society A would report lower levels of
life satisfaction than people from society B, but since we know that
drivers often report being consciously aware of the frustration and
stress they experience during commuting, it is a plausible conjecture
that subjective well-being, as conventionally measured, would be lower
in society A. Even if the negative effects of commuting stress never
broke through into conscious awareness, however, we would still have
powerful reasons for wishing to escape them.
On the strength of the available evidence, then, it appears that a
rational person would have powerful reasons to choose society B, and
no reasons to avoid it. And yet, despite this evidence, the United
States is moving steadily in the direction of society A. Even as our
houses continue to grow in size, the average length of our commute to
work continues to grow longer. Between 1982 and 2000, for example, the
time penalty for peak-period travelers increased from 16 to 62 hours
per year; the daily window of time during which travelers might
experience congestion increased from 4.5 to 7 hours; and the volume of
roadways where travel is congested grew from 34 to 58 percent.^[49]32
The Federal Highway Administration predicts that the extra time spent
driving because of delays will rise from 2.7 billion vehicle hours in
1985 to 11.9 billion in 2005.^[50]33
Table 1
Four thought experiments: the conspicuous consumption of society A
versus the inconspicuous consumption of society B
Society A Society B
1 Everyone lives in 4,000-square-foot houses and has no free time for
exercise each day. 1 Everyone lives in 3,000-square-foot houses and
has 45 minutes available for exercise each day.
2 Everyone lives in 4,000-square-foot houses and has time to get
together with friends one evening each month. 2 Everyone lives in
3,000-square-foot houses and has time to get together with friends
four evenings each month.
3 Everyone lives in 4,000-square-foot houses and has one week of
vacation each year. 3 Everyone lives in 3,000-square-foot houses and
has four weeks of vacation each year.
4 Everyone lives in 4,000-square-foot houses and has a relatively low
level of personal autonomy in the workplace. 4 Everyone lives in
3,000-square-foot houses and has a relatively high level of personal
autonomy in the workplace.
Table 1 lists four similar thought experiments that ask you to choose
between societies that offer different combinations of material goods
and free time to pursue other activities. Each case assumes a specific
use of the free time and asks that you imagine it to be one that
appeals to you (if not, feel free to substitute some other activity
that does).
The choice in each of these thought experiments is one between
conspicuous consumption (in the form of larger houses) and what, for
want of a better term, I shall call inconspicuous consumption freedom
from traffic congestion, time with family and friends, vacation time,
and a variety of favorable job characteristics. In each case the
evidence suggests that subjective well-being will be higher in the
society with a greater balance of inconspicuous consumption. ^[51]34
And yet in each case the actual trend in U.S. consumption patterns has
been in the reverse direction.
The list of inconspicuous consumption items could be extended
considerably. Thus we could ask whether living in slightly smaller
houses would be a reasonable price to pay for higher air quality, for
more urban parkland, for cleaner drinking water, for a reduction in
violent crime, or for medical research that would reduce premature
death. And in each case the answer would be the same as in the cases
we have considered thus far.
My point in the thought experiments is not that inconspicuous
consumption is always preferable to conspicuous consumption. Indeed,
in each case we might envision a minority of rational individuals who
might choose society A over society B. Some people may simply dislike
autonomy on the job, or dislike exercise, or dislike spending time
with family and friends. But if we accept that there is little
sacrifice in subjective well-being when all have slightly smaller
houses, the real question is whether a rational person could find some
more productive use for the resources thus saved. Given the absolute
sizes of the houses involved in the thought experiments, the answer to
this question would seem to be yes.
It might seem natural to suppose that when per capita income rises
sharply, as it has in most countries since at least the end of World
War II, most people would spend more on both conspicuous and
inconspicuous consumption. In many instances, this is in fact what
seems to have happened. Thus the cars we buy today are not only faster
and more luxuriously equipped, but also safer and more reliable. If
both forms of consumption have been rising, however, and if
inconspicuous consumption boosts subjective well-being, then why has
subjective well-being not increased during the last several decades?
A plausible answer is that whereas some forms of inconspicuous
consumption have been rising, others have been declining, often
sharply. There have been increases in the annual number of hours spent
at work in the United States during the last two decades; traffic has
grown considerably more congested; savings rates have fallen
precipitously; personal bankruptcy filings are at an alltime high; and
there is at least a widespread perception that employment security and
autonomy have fallen sharply. Declines in these and other forms of
inconspicuous consumption may well have offset the effects of
increases in others.
The more troubling question is why we have not used our resources more
wisely. If we could all live healthier, longer, and more satisfying
lives by simply changing our spending patterns, why havent we done
that?
As even the most ardent free-market economists have long recognized,
the invisible hand cannot be expected to deliver the greatest good for
all in cases in which each individuals well-being depends on the
actions taken by others with whom he does not interact directly. This
qualification was once thought important in only a limited number of
arenas most importantly, activities that generate environmental
pollution. We now recognize, however, that the interdependencies among
us are considerably more pervasive. For present purposes, chief among
them are the ways in which the spending decisions of some individuals
affect the frames of reference within which others make important
choices.
Many important rewards in lifeaccess to the best schools, to the most
desirable mates, and even, in times of famine, to the food needed for
survival depend critically on how the choices we make compare to the
choices made by others. In most cases, the person who stays at the
office two hours longer each day to be able to afford a house in a
better school district has no conscious intention to make it more
difficult for others to achieve the same goal. Yet that is an
inescapable consequence of his action. The best response available to
others may be to work longer hours as well, thereby to preserve their
current positions. Yet the ineluctable mathematical logic of musical
chairs assures that only 10 percent of all children can occupy
top-decile school seats, no matter how many hours their parents work.
That many purchases become more attractive to us when others make them
means that consumption spending has much in common with a military
arms race. A family can choose how much of its own money to spend, but
it cannot choose how much others spend. Buying a smaller-than-average
vehicle means greater risk of dying in an accident. Spending less on
an interview suit means a greater risk of not landing the best job.
Yet when all spend more on heavier cars and more finely tailored
suits, the results tend to be mutually offsetting, just as when all
nations spend more on armaments. Spending less on bombs or on personal
consumption frees up money for other pressing uses, but only if
everyone does it.
What, exactly, is the incentive problem that leads nations to spend
too much on armaments? It is not sufficient merely that each nations
payoff from spending on arms depends on how its spending compares with
that of rival nations. Suppose, for example, that each nations payoff
from spending on nonmilitary goods also depended, to the same extent
as for military goods, on the amounts spent on nonmilitary goods by
other nations. The tendency of military spending to siphon off
resources from other spending categories would then be offset by an
equal tendency in the opposite direction. That is, if each nation had
a fixed amount of national income to allocate between military and
nonmilitary goods, and if the payoffs in each category were equally
context sensitive, then we would expect no imbalance across the
categories.
For an imbalance to occur in favor of armaments, the reward from
armaments spending must be more context sensitive than the reward from
nonmilitary spending. And since this is precisely the case, the
generally assumed imbalance occurs. After all, to be second best in a
military arms race often means a loss of political autonomyclearly a
much higher cost than the discomfort of having toasters with fewer
slots.
In brief, we expect an imbalance in the choice between two activities
if the individual rewards from one are more context sensitive than the
individual rewards from the other. The evidence described earlier
suggests that the satisfaction provided by many conspicuous forms of
consumption is more context sensitive than the satisfaction provided
by many less conspicuous forms of consumption. If so, this would help
explain why the absolute income and consumption increases of recent
decades have failed to translate into corresponding increases in
measured well-being.
_________________________________________________________________
^1 This paper draws heavily on chapters 5 and 6 of my book Luxury
Fever (New York: The Free Press, 1999). [52]BACK
^2 Richard Easterlin, Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? in
Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses
Abramovitz, ed. Paul David and Melvin Reder (New York: Academic Press,
1974), and Richard Easterlin, Will Raising the Incomes of All Increase
the Happiness of All? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 27
(1995): 3547. [53]BACK
^3 See Easterlin, Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? [54]BACK
^4 For surveys of this evidence, see chapter 2 of Robert H. Frank,
Choosing the Right Pond (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) and
Andrew Clark and Andrew Oswald, Satisfaction and Comparison Income,
Journal of Public Economics 61 (1996): 359381. [55]BACK
^5 Ed Diener and Richard E. Lucas, Personality and Subjective
Well-Being, in Understanding Well-Being: Scientific Perspectives on
Enjoyment and Suffering, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert
Schwartz (New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 1998). [56]BACK
^6 Ruut Veenhoven, Happiness in Nations (Rotterdam: Erasmus
University, 1993). [57]BACK
^7 Ed Diener, Ed Sandvik, Larry Seidlitz, and Marissa Diener, The
Relationship Between Income and Subjective Well-Being: Relative or
Absolute? Social Indicators Research 28 (1993): 195223. [58]BACK
^8 See, for example, Peter Townsend, The Development of Research on
Poverty, in Social Security Research: The Definition and Measurement
of Poverty (London: hmso, 1979). [59]BACK
^9 R. J. Bulman and C. B. Wortman, Attributes of Blame and Coping in
the Real World: Severe Accident Victims React to Their Lot, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 35 (May 1977): 351363. [60]BACK
^10 P. Cameron, Stereotypes About Generational Fun and Happiness vs.
Self-Appraised Fun and Happiness, The Gerontologist 12 (Summer 1972):
120123. [61]BACK
^11 P. Brickman, D. Coates, and R. Janoff-Bulman, Lottery Winners and
Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 36 (August 1978): 917927. [62]BACK
^12 David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who is Happy and Why?
(New York: Avon, 1993). [63]BACK
^13 Meni Koslowsky, Avraham N. Kluger, and Mordechai Reich, Commuting
Stress (New York: Plenum, 1995). [64]BACK
^14 David C. Glass, Jerome Singer, and James Pennegaker, Behavioral
and Physiological Effects of Uncontrollable Environmental Events, in
Perspectives on Environment and Behavior, ed. Daniel Stokols (New
York: Plenum, 1977). [65]BACK
^15 Ibid. [66]BACK
^16 N. D. Weinstein, Community Noise Problems: Evidence Against
Adaptation, Journal of Environmental Psychology 2 (1982): 8297.
[67]BACK
^17 Glass et al., Behavioral and Physiological Effects of
Uncontrollable Environmental Events. [68]BACK
^18 Ibid., figures 5 and 6. [69]BACK
^19 L. Long and J. Perry, Economic and Occupational Causes of Transit
Operator Absenteeism: A Review of Research, Transport Reviews 5
(1985): 247267. [70]BACK
^20 D. Ragland, M. Winkleby, J. Schwalbe, B. Holman, L. Morse, L.
Syme, and J. Fisher, Prevalence of Hypertension in Bus Drivers,
International Journal of Epidemiology 16 (1987): 208214; W. Pikus and
W. Tarranikova, The Frequency of Hypertensive Diseases in Public
Transportation, Terapevischeskii Archives 47 (1975): 135137; and G.
Evans, M. Palsane, and S. Carrere, Type A Behavior and Occupational
Stress: A Cross-Cultural Study of Blue-Collar Workers, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987): 10021007. [71]BACK
^21 Ibid. [72]BACK
^22 G. Evans and S. Carrere, Traffic Congestion, Perceived Control,
and Psychophysiological Stress Among Urban Bus Drivers, Journal of
Applied Psychology 76 (1991): 658663. [73]BACK
^23 Gary W. Evans, Working on the Hot Seat: Urban Bus Drivers,
Accident Analysis and Prevention 26 (1994): 181193. [74]BACK
^24 David C. Glass and Jerome Singer, Urban Stressors: Experiments on
Noise and Social Stressors (New York: Academic Press, 1972); D. R.
Sherrod, Crowding, Perceived Control, and Behavioral Aftereffects,
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 4 (1974): 171186. [75]BACK
^25 Daniel Stokols, Raymond W. Novaco, Jeannette Stokols, and Joan
Campbell, Traffic Congestion, Type A Behavior, and Stress, Journal of
Applied Psychology 63 (1978): 467 480. [76]BACK
^26 Ibid., table 3. [77]BACK
^27 Anita DeLongis, Susan Folkman, and Richard S. Lazarus, The Impact
of Daily Stress on Health and Mood: Psychological and Social Resources
as Mediators, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988):
486495. [78]BACK
^28 Koslowsky et al., Commuting Stress, chap. 4. [79]BACK
^29 Koslowsky et al., Commuting Stress. [80]BACK
^30 P. Taylor and C. Pocock, Commuter Travel and Sickness: Absence of
London Office Workers, British Journal of Preventive and Social
Medicine 26 (1972): 165172; Meni Koslowsky and Moshe Krausz, On the
Relationship Between Commuting, Stress Symptoms, and Attitudinal
Measures, Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences (December 1993):
485492. [81]BACK
^31 European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions, The Journey from Home to the Workplace: The Impact on the
Safety and Health of the Community/ Workers (Dublin: European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions,
1984). [82]BACK
^32 David Schrank and Tim Lomax, [83]The 2002 Urban Mobility Report,
Texas Transportation Institute, mobility.tamu. edu/>. [84]BACK
^33 Charles S. Clark, Traffic Congestion, The CQ Researcher, 6 May
1994, 387404. [85]BACK
^34 For a detailed survey of the supporting studies, see Frank, Luxury
Fever, chap. 6. [86]BACK
References
16. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?sid=FC596BED-A5E6-4DCB-AF4C-877A3AC9F14D&aid=23231
17. http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/daed_133_2_69_0.pdf
83. http://mobility.tamu.edu/
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