The U.S. Is Getting Richer But Americans Are Unhappier

[prasad1]

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A report released by the World Economic Forum on Wednesday found that, while the U.S. economy is the most competitive in the world, it has come at the expense of a “weakening social fabric.” Life expectancy is falling, driven in part by increases in “deaths of despair” ― people dying from suicide and substance abuse. This particularly affects white men without a college education who are falling between the cracks and dropping out of the workforce ― about 15 percent of men ages 25 to 54 are not working.

It’s not just an American issue, either. China’s economic growth has been phenomenal. Between 1990 and 2009, its gross domestic product increased by at least four times and life expectancy increased from 67 to 74 years, yet life satisfaction has tumbled. India too, another economic success story, has seen life satisfaction levels drop by 10 percent between 2006 and 2017.


Basically, as countries get richer, many of the people living in them seem to be getting unhappier.

It’s a phenomenon that Carol Graham, economics professor and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, calls the “progress paradox,” where unprecedented economic growth and improvements in areas like health and literacy coexist with the bad stuff: climate change, pockets of persistent poverty, increased income inequality and unhappiness.

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2018/...-unhappier_a_23566928/?utm_hp_ref=in-politics

 

[yvspriya]

HI Prasad,

What you say is right. Today there is more money but less happiness. In older days there was less money but people were more peaceful, this is the irony of life to gain something you have to lose something but to draw a fine line between the gain and loss and balance life is the art.