Who's Happier?

A column at The Federalist by Senior Editor Glenn Stanton takes to task Garrison Keillor, of all people, for what must be either his malevolence or gross ignorance.

Stanton quotes Keillor: “Liberalism is the politics of kindness.” Liberals “stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, [and] the defense of the weak against the powerful.” In...contrast, the “people who call themselves conservatives stand for tax cuts, and further tax cuts, annual tax cuts, the only policy they know. [They] use their refund to buy a gun and an attack dog” to keep everyone away who is not like them.

Well, that may be Keillor's point of view, but it turns out that serious scholarship has shown that none of this is true and is, in fact, the very opposite of the truth. According to the research,

Conservatives have happier families, find more meaning in life, are generally happier overall, and donate far more money and time to the needy than their liberal peers.

Also, it’s not just general conservatism per se that makes the difference. The more socially conservative people are, the happier and more content with life they are. And party affiliation matters significantly. Conservative Republicans outpace conservative, moderate, and liberal Democrats. When picking your neighbors, regardless of your politics or beliefs, conservative Republicans are who you want.

Stanton doesn't explain this, but it's probably the case that it's conservative values that foster contentment and Republican conservatives are generally more conservative than their Democratic counterparts. Stanton goes on:

Forty-one percent of both liberals and moderates report being “completely satisfied” with their family lives, while 52 percent of conservatives do.

Conservatives are also vastly more likely than liberals to believe marriage is essential in creating and maintaining strong families. They are also much more likely to actually be married, 62 versus 39 percent, thus benefiting from all the ways marriage improves overall well-being and contentment, personal happiness, economic security, long-term employment, longevity, better physical and mental health, and more.

Being a conservative increases the odds of being “completely satisfied with family life” by 23 percent. Married men and women who believe “marriage is needed to create strong families” have 67 percent greater odds of being completely content with their own family life than married couples who do not believe this.

Not only are they more satisfied with their family life but according to the research conservatives are just happier overall:

A much larger body of research has long demonstrated that, all things being equal, conservatives tend to be happier overall than their liberal neighbors are. This is truer for social conservatives than for fiscal conservatives, and the more conservative a conservative is, the happier he or she seems to be.

A massive study published earlier this year, involving five different data samples from 16 Western countries spanning more than four decades, adds more meat to this topic. These scholars from the University of Southern California found, as they put it, “In sum, conservatives reported greater meaning in life and greater life satisfaction than liberals.”

Conservatives experience greater meaning in life across their lives generally, but also daily and at most given moments throughout the day. The researchers conclude these findings are “robust” and that “there is some unique aspect of political conservatism that provides people with meaning and purpose in life.”

Multiple studies consistently show this difference in overall happiness and contentment is not affected by whose party or ideological partisans are in the seats of power in the White House or Congress. It seems as if the beliefs themselves matter most.

Since conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals the following is not surprising:

Likewise, regular church attenders are nearly twice as likely to say they are “very happy” than those who seldom or never attend, and this is consistently well-founded in a vast body of literature. So church-going, Republican conservatives are just some of the happiest, most contented folks around.

It seems reasonable to believe that happiness is correlated with generosity and this, too, is borne out by the research:

Finally, if you had to guess who are more generous with their money and volunteering their time to help those in need, would you guess Democrats or Republicans? ... Conservative Republicans are consistently more generous than their Democratic neighbors. This is true among all income levels, including the wealthiest. Republican millionaires give more of their money away to the needy than Democratic millionaires.

The data is so strong that even New York Times columnist Paul Sullivan admitted the “more Republican a county is, the more its residents report charitable contributions.” His colleague at the Times, Nicholas Kristof ... laments that his clan doesn’t fare so well on kindness in the form of real dollars:

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

In his excellent book Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, Arthur C. Brooks presents what he describes as “a large amount of data all pointing in the same direction.” ... He says, “People who favor government income redistribution are significantly less likely to donate to charity than those who do not.”

He perceptively notes that for a certain type of ideological American, “political opinions are a substitute for personal checks, but people who value economic freedom, and thus bridle against forced income distribution, are far more charitable” to those in need.

Stanton elaborates on all this in the article and offers links to the studies.

One thing I wondered as I read his piece is whether people were happier because they were religious and conservative or whether happier people just tend to gravitate toward those particular beliefs.

In any case, there's doubtless a moral in all this. In the universal human search for happiness in life, we'd do well to seek it where it's most likely to be found and not waste time looking for it where it's less likely to be found.