I’ve been MIA on TMV as I managed the graduation celebration of the nephew we brought into our home three years ago in order to help him through college. He made it; with honors and an outstanding student award.

We’re proud.

Graduation week in a college town is always joyful; this is our first time with a graduate in the family. A good time to reflect a bit on happiness…

Ben Bernanke quoted happiness research in a commencement speech at the University of South Carolina yesterday. The Federal Reserve Chairman told graduates that money won’t buy it:

“[A]s countries get richer, beyond the level where basic needs such as food and shelter are met, people don’t report being any happier. For example, although today most Americans surveyed will tell you they are happy with their lives, the fraction of those who say that they are happy is not any higher than it was 40 years ago…once you get above a basic sustenance level—on average, people in rich countries don’t report being all that much happier than people in lower-income countries…

“People’s happiness depends less on their absolute wealth than on their wealth compared with others around them. If I live in a country in which most people have only one cow, and I have three cows, then I will have lots of social status and self-esteem and will thus feel happy. But if everyone around me has a luxury car, and I am hung up on status, I won’t feel very special unless I have both a luxury car and an SUV. This relative-wealth hypothesis can explain why rich people are happier than poor people in the same country, but also why people in richer countries are not on average much happier than people in poorer countries. It’s the big fish in a little pond phenomenon.”

In The Politics of Happiness, Derek Bok, who retired from the presidency of Harvard in 1991, argues that public policy should be based on what we’ve learned through happiness research. While David Brooks named it as one of a rash of compelling books arguing “that public institutions should pay attention to well-being and not just material growth narrowly conceived,” that’s about the best notice it’s gotten. This review, from the NYTimes, is typical:

Economists, especially those who cross the disciplinary boundary into psychology, have recently begun informing us about what makes people happy. The American political system, as Thomas Jefferson memorably declared, seeks among its three objectives the pursuit of that very thing. The conclusion seems self-evident: Apply what psychology teaches us to the way the system works and the achievement of a good society will be one step closer. […]

Wise Bok may be, but persuasive, at least in this book, he is not. For Bok’s argument to work, two conditions have to be met. One, empirical in nature, is that the findings of the economic psychologists must be shown to be trustworthy. The other, a normative issue, requires a demonstration that happiness is indeed something government ought to maximize. “The Politics of Happiness” satisfies neither one.

Even the Lefty [*cough* sarcasm *cough*] NYTimes doesn’t trust the research. Or Jefferson. On this I’m guessing the Tea Party crowd would find rare agree with the NYTimes: They don’t want government messing with our happiness.

Well, I do.

What I don’t want is a Fed Chief talking to graduates about money not buying happiness while the moves he made in his official capacity have made a few far richer while the rest of us continue to sink lower into the income-inequality muck of a slow recovery. (And just how happy is Bernanke, anyway?)

Perhaps Bok’s book would have fared better had he quoted the work of two British academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In their book, The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, they build a compelling case that almost every modern social and environmental problem is more likely to occur in a less equal society:

The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them—the well-off as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

I’ve pointed to Wilkinson and Pickett before, here and here, and I will be pointing to them again and again going forward. I believe their work has serious implications for public policy, and I say so to the students I work with every chance I get.

They are our future. And I have great faith in them.

For the present I’m happy here on this Sunday morning with the birds chirping, the sun shining, a breeze blowing… and a good amount of left-over graduation party cake. I’m also happy about the good work of Team TMV who launched District TMV yesterday. I hope to see you mix it up there!

FOR MORE: Wilkinson and Pickett describe their book in 3 minutes; in 50 minutes; with puppets; with slides. Their website, The Equality Trust. Bok interviewed on Charlie Rose.

You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.