Hacker News Reader

Furthermore, it seems to imply that being a business owner makes you happy. It could just as well be that people who often take control of their lives and actively pursue what makes them happy, which perhaps has a huge influence on their natural happiness, are more likely to become business owners.

My experience is that business owners (of necessity when dealing with lenders, customers and their own doubts and fears) have trained themselves to tell white lies. They'll say to everyone "Yeah things are going great, business is booming, I couldn't be happier!" when actually they are totally stressed out.

Not only is there no variance. If we assume that the data is statistically significant (a bad assumption!), the difference between business owner (72.5%) and professional (71.5%) is very small. An alternative reading is that professionals are almost as likely to be happy as business owners.

It also suffers from survivor bias.

As someone whose business did not survive, I can't agree more. :)