New High of 90% of Americans Satisfied with Personal Life | Hacker News Reader

New High of 90% of Americans Satisfied with Personal Life

news.gallup.com

33 pointsdatashow72 comments

"Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for different people to the point of being useless. I feel underpaid and am unspeakably sad about the ways in which my society is declining, but I would answer "yes, extremely" if somebody asked if I was satisfied with my "personal" life. I think there are other people in my exact same position and with my exact same level of happiness who would answer differently if asked this specific question.

> "Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for different people to the point of being useless.

Of course "satisfaction with personal life", like many things in survey, can have very different implications for different people. But it does not necessarily make it being useless.

You could ask more questions about people specific satisfactions with personal life, it does not make the general sense of satisfaction with personal life useless.

I'm not saying the problem is that people are made satisfied by different things. I'm saying that I don't believe the concept of "general satisfaction with personal life" is a useful or meaningful concept because of the English language - because of the different interpretations of what it means. For a counter-example, I think people have a much more consistent feeling of what it means to be "happy" in general.

With student debt levels approaching the astronomical, and default rates escalating proportionately, I think we generally just have our heads in the sand about how absolutely wrecked we're about to become later on. So "sure, or course everything is great"... for now.

You're paying attention to outliers. Most people don't have astronomical student debts, and most that due are in general in extremely high paying professions. Student debt is a problem, but most people do no have 100k in debt for creative writing, etc.

The easy solution is to limit government student loans to 20k and be done with it.

There is roughly 1.6 trillion dollars in student loan debt owed. 40% ($640 billion) of that will be defaulted on. There won't be any large derivatives markets set up to eat it like there were with the mortgage lending crisis. The people who will end up footing the bill for this won't be insured banks, it'll be John Q Taxpayer, and the economy writ-large. Even limiting to $20k per person won't solve this issue.

But do we have a better estimate for things like happiness? Than questionnaires?

Perhaps not, but if the goal is to measure happiness, then in my opinion this specific questionnaire does not do that. I'm sure there are questionnaires with that goal that consist of more relevant and well-thought-out questions.

I wonder what the difference is between this poll and this other poll from last month, with a writeup by the same author:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/276503/happiness-not-quite-wide...

EDIT: It seems the primary difference is in the question:

Asking "are you satisfied with your personal life" garners much more of an enthusiastic response than "are you happy", apparently?

I'm satisfied but it's only because I make more than twice the median household income by myself with no kids and can work remotely at an easy job. I don't know how 90% is satisfied with so much less.

Because median household income is on the rise, jobless rates in females are on decline, 8+ million Americans off food stamp dependence, and consumer confidence is at an 18 year high.

People outside of Silicon Valley and Seattle really need to understand that this number is so high not only because of them (like me and you in this case, having great jobs and being single) but also because the average American worker in Buhl, Idaho is seeing their wages increase and their quality of life get better.

Super rich Hollywood people can't understand how you are happy without hanging out with models and celebrities at your Oceanview house.

It’s not even true - they may be _less_ likely to be satisfied, for reasons tht you may find ridiculoous (but are not to them). I believe satisfaction comes mostly from within, not necessarily with what you have. It’s largely on you to observe either what you have - or what you don’t.

Yes exactly. Satisfaction is significantly affected by your expectations. If your expectations change, then satisfaction changes as well.

Good for you, it’s great to hear. I _love_ being a parent, and I love working in an open-plan office, so it’s great that we can both be happy despite wanting different things from life. Maybe the common thread is being paid well, but even then, I know people on minimum wage that seem very satisfied.

The no child comment was an implication about the cost of children, not that they make people unhappy (though statistically they do)

Other studies have shown that happiness does not increase with income after the point at which people can afford to be comfortable.

Consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: income can help you with several parts of the hierarchy, but it cannot buy all of them.

This is wrong. The studies have shown that there is a point past which more money yields rapidy diminishing happiness returns. That is different from not yielding any additional return at all.

If you are thinking about this highly-cited study, that is not what they concluded

https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489

> We infer that beyond about $75,000/y, there is no improvement whatever in any of the three measures of emotional well-being.

Although, even if we assume your assertion is true, it's a distinction without a difference in the context of the above thread.

People are using it in the context of "should I take a job that I like more which pays X or should I take a job I like less that pays 2X"

If X is 10k you should go with the 2X job. If X is 150k you should go with the 1x job

Satisfaction is largely a relative thing. People notice if their situation is improving / staying the same / getting worse. They don't so much care about their absolute ranking in society.

Also note that, as another reply mentioned, this has little to do with actual monetary values.

If you didn’t get a raise, that sucks. If your friends got laid off... well, then keeping your salary is great. If no one got laid off but you were able to buy a new x and none of your friends were, regardless of income changes, you’re still going to feel better. It’s “keeping up with the Joneses”.

This is a really good point that I also think has something to do with "would you rather gain 50 dollars or avoid losing 50 dollars, most people would avoid the loss".

If you are not "losing" anything in daily life, but also not gaining much, you may be inclined to feel better or a least more optimistic.

Because it’s always about change in income, not absolute numbers. I guarantee you someone who went from making $50k to $100k in a year will report being happier than a guy who made a steady $1m each year.

The first thing you list is money. For others, it would be family, friends.

This seems to contradict the opioid and suicide epidemics that reduced the American life expectancy statistic; But is a welcome change.

I have my doubts in people's ability to assess their own emotions. I'm fairly conscientious, but I often have trouble boiling down my thoughts and feelings into simple words like "happy" or "satisfied". If I were asked if I'm satisfied with my personal life, I'd say yes, but only because saying I'm dissatisfied is negative and gets interpreted the wrong way. People assume too much and make judgments when you give them even the slightest hint that not everything is perfect with you. Life is too complicated for me to actually satisfied or dissatisfied.

I feel like there's too many "I" and "me" statements here to substantiate the conclusion that people at large can't assess their own emotions.

I didn't say that people at large can't assess their emotions. When I said I have my doubts, what I meant is that I think that people are generally poor at it, which doesn't mean I don't think they're capable. There's a difference.

The rest of what I wrote wasn't really my full reasoning for that conclusion. I can only experience my own emotions, so I have to go with that. And I don't have any diagnosed psychiatric conditions, so I don't think it's that unfair to reflect on my emotional introspection. I never dictated anything other than that I have "doubts".

I don't have a specific reason why I think people aren't very good at assessing their emotions. It's a conclusion from an amalgam of my experiences with other people. People can certainly recognize if they are happy or sad, for instance, but I don't find they are very good at distinguishing between things like contentment and happiness. I've met lots of people who think that an absence of happiness is sadness, when in reality someone can be emotionally neutral.(the connotations around the word unhappy don't help) It's common for people to confuse depression for sadness. Personality and how someone can respond to emotion can mask their feelings, making them less obvious to both others and themselves.

"Tepid satisfaction"?

If everyone is satisfied, what then is everyone chasing after all the time?

Having something to chase is part of being satisfied.

I understand the topic is naturally political, but it would be nice to see discussions not super political bashing Trump vs Clinton and so on. A lot of the comments I see here are pretty subjective, anecdotal and emotional. I really don't like seeing this on Hacker News.

Note in the article it says: "WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in Gallup's four-decade trend. The latest figure bests the previous high of 88% recorded in 2003."

In 2003 there were a lot of issues too. 9/11 recently happened, some wars in the Middle East... So why not read the actual article? They try to go into details as to why people are feeling happier. E.g.

"Household income, political party affiliation and marital status are associated with the largest subgroup differences in Americans' satisfaction with their personal life . Roughly 95% of Americans who live in high-income households, who identify as Republicans and who are married say they are satisfied with their personal life -- and about three in four among each of these groups are very satisfied.

Meanwhile, adults in low-income households are the least likely to say they are satisfied with their life, followed by Democrats and unmarried adults. Among each of these groups, small majorities report being very satisfied. Low-income Americans hold the distinction of having the lowest percentage very satisfied

It's likely no coincidence that Americans' heightened satisfaction with their personal life comes as confidence in the U.S. economy and their personal finances are also at long-term or record highs."

The article even talks about races and genders, which again is correlated with income. Being married too. So presumably this happiness is in large part due to the economic boom of late. The article even concludes with this. Comments here can say the question is ambiguous or people don't know how they feel themselves all they want, but the evidence, and just plain intuition, strongly suggests it has a lot to do with the economy. People reeeeaaaallllyy care about bread on the table for their family, not tweets from the president, or the "political climate", or Bad Thing X, or any of the other comments here.

I fully expect downvotes, but hey ho, that's emotional politics for you. What I've actually written should be pretty non-controversial honestly: TL,DR; "People care about family and bread on the table a lot".

Somewhere on Twitter that I can't find, this survey was charted back into the 1970s. The lowest the positive response was reported was during stagflation, oil embargo, post-Vietnam years, and it was in the 70%.

Yup. The economy matters A LOT. Perhaps the crowd on Hacker News have stable careers so don't value it quite as much, so we find other things to worry about ;-)

Based on 0.0003099022% of the population. Sure thing, I believe this.

This cannot be accurate. I've traveled the midwest, and so many are miserable. I don't buy this at all.

Anecdotal at best.. your experience meeting maybe upwards of 50 people across the midwest cannot possibly be taken with the same consideration as a major polling outlet with 2500x the reach.

Why are all these comments so grumpy? “People are happy? What on earth is wrong with them?”

The awful political situation right now has encouraged me to spend less time keeping up with news, and to spend more time reading classic literature. So, thanks to Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, I am feeling more satisfied with life - just not in the way you’d assume if I just said “I’m happy in my personal life”.

This is dismissive and insulting. Justified or not, the people you're referring to are clearly incredulous that the poll accurately measures happiness, not that they think there is something wrong with being happy.

I don't agree. It seems very much like they're saying people couldn't be happy; that given the current state of the country it would be wrong to be satisfied.

I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured. However, there seems to be a lot of confirmation bias going on in this thread - “This surprises me, therefore it must be wrong”. They’re not point to any more reliable evidence that suggests the poll is wrong, just giving anecdotal opinions.

> 'I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured.'

In point of fact, it's a blatant lie. Not a shred of truth to it. 90% of Americans happy with their lives? LOL. "Step away from the crack pipe."

People are so happy to be alive they are at each other's throats daily over any one of millions of political disagreements.

People are so happy they are checking out by the millions via drug overdoses and suicide.

Close to 10% of the entire nation is in prison. Most of those work in sweat shops for big corporations at 50 cents an hour. I bet they're thrilled to be alive also.

We're told unemployment is 2.7%, but when we calculate the numbers ourselves using the exact same methodology as the U.S. government used during the previous Great Depression, we find they have somehow misplaced a decimal point--and that unemployment now is in fact worse than it was in the 1930s.

Which is obvious, to those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear of all the "I hurt muh back" types roaming about the land, "getting a check", with no gainful employment to speak of.

Anyone who doesn't believe me can go calculate the numbers themselves; but most won't.

What about all of those people screaming about lack of health care, racism, etc; all roses and butterflies in the USA, amirite?

Definitely no major shootouts going on between gangs in Baltimore and Detroit right now. No mile after mile of economic devastation, bombed out neighborhoods as far as the eye can see. Yet another example of the zen garden of bliss that is the USA, with 90% of everyone happy as can be.

Tent cities full of homeless, as far as the eye can see, in major and increasingly even minor cities across the land?

Must I really continue???

The USA, much like the rest of the entire world, is controlled by lying psychopaths. And you're complicit.

Do we really trust the results of polls anymore? After the 2016 election where all of the polls showed Hillary winning the election, I just don't trust them at all.

It's almost like people are treating polls like SPAM calls, and just tell them anything to keep them on the line as long as possible intentionally giving bogus answers.

We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true. A poll showing 90% of Americans are satisfied with their personal life is a pretty strong refutation of claims like "suchandsuch trend has propelled America to unknown depths of misery", even accounting for the possibility of bias.

> We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true.

Yes and no. Polls shouldn't be treated as gospel truth, but they shouldn't override our intuitions either. If there's a discrepancy, it means you have to dig deeper find the truth.

I think there's a level of discrepancy where they should override our intuitions. If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look for ways the might be biased.

> If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look for ways the might be biased.

That's putting undue weight on quantified data, and letting it shut down attempts to actually find the truth. Polls can be biased or badly designed, metrics can be gamed or not actually measure what they claim to, or the poll could be founded some flawed assumptions. If you assume your intuition is wrong when you see a "strong" poll result, you'll never discover errors of the kind I just enumerated.

> 'If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look for ways the might be biased.'

Your comment reminds me of this anecdote:

> "What I've noticed from users is that a windows user will blame the computer every time even if it is their own mistake, and an apple user will blame themselves every time even if the hardware failed.

> "Apple users know they have the Fancy Name Brand that Cool People(TM) use, so they have multiple levels of psychological aversion to blaming it for anything. They would be less cool by extension. And the brand image doesn't place any value on being capable of using "regular" technology, so they take no hit to their hipster image by blaming themselves.

> "It is really the same as any other name brand item. If a person buys name brand jeans and they tear, they're going to blame themselves for not taking better care of something expensive. Another person who buys a different brand gets mad that it didn't last longer because they only tried to use it in the "normal" way. If they blame it for anything, even its own real failings, then they lose the snob value."

The interpretation of said anecdote as it applies to your situation is left as an exercise to the reader.

Agree. We’re living with every choice being polled and chosen by those polls. There’s nothing worse for any policy than a bad poll. Unless it’s the seeming acceptance of around 43% being a majority for some.

Edit-it’s always worth considering the error bars on polls. News will gladly say A is preferred to B when their difference is well within error bars.

The 2016 poll was not off, what was wrong is the prediction models which did not take account of electoral college sufficiently. Poll and prediction are two very different things.

No pre-election analysis had Trump at 0%. Unlikely outcomes happen.

If I put two blue marbles and one red marble in a bag and ask you to blindly draw one, you probably won't be too shocked if you end up drawing the red one. Yet if it happens in an election everybody starts suddenly claiming all polling and statistics are useless.

> After the 2016 election where all of the polls showed Hillary winning the election

The actual analysis of the polls showed Trump was well within striking distance of Hillary. People just didn't want to hear that.

Why bring mass-insult style politics into this? The polls described large differences in likelihoods, not large differences in numbers. People were not ignoring the polls.

> Why bring mass-insult style politics into this?

I didn't think I was?

This has got to be fake right? Economic disparity, environmental uncertainty, political nonsense. Either the people surveyed are completely tuned out and just glad to be able to watch Netflix all day or mass-shootings are a new way of expressing how personally happy you are.

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