OT:
1. Peter, I have an Internet friend chasing down the ML periodical. Hope to be able to forward it soon.
2. Very "uplifting" story in today's WSJ. I'm surprised that the thread's posters passed by this important article on the most direct approach to improving one's sense of well being. <g>
Pleasure Principle:
Study Says More Sex
Akin to Higher Pay
Economists Gauge the Link
Between Following the Id
And Boosting Happiness
By JON E. HILSENRATH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 7, 2004; Page C3
Economists have labored for centuries to find ways to reduce unemployment, inequality and inflation, in a noble quest to improve human well-being. Now, economic researchers have determined a more down-to-earth prescription for the welfare of humankind: more sex.
In a paper submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group in Cambridge, Mass., economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Oswald of Warwick University in England try to gauge how sex measures up against other factors in determining a person's satisfaction in life.
Mr. Blanchflower admits that his findings may appear to be common knowledge, but he says "we are trying to scale it and measure its degree of importance."
Mr. Blanchflower calculates that going from having sex once a month to having it at least weekly is roughly equivalent to the amount of happiness that an extra $50,000 of income would bring to the average American. "The effect of sex on happiness is statistically well-determined ... and large," the authors conclude. "This is true for males and females, and for those under and over the age of 40."
The paper is titled, "Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study." It is based on data from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys.
This kind of research has a tradition in economics, going back to the 19th century work of philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham on pleasure, happiness and utility.
One recent paper by several economists, including 2002 Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, found in a survey of 909 women in Texas that sex rated as the activity in day-to-day life that produced the single largest amount of happiness.
Among their other findings, Messrs. Blanchflower and Oswald found that higher-income individuals do not have sex any more often, or have any more partners, than lower-income individuals; that people who have paid for sex are considerably less happy than others; and that the happiness-optimizing number of sexual partners per year is one.
Write to Jon E. Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath@wsj.com |
