New Poll on Personal Happiness

Jim W. said:
I think the kind of people they described as 90% of being happy, are that way because they only care about how well they're doing and how many toys they have. They are probably the kind who spend very little time thinking or worrying about things like the environment, global warming, poverty, foreign relations, etc, etc, etc.
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Er, it's a poll. They didn't pick out specific individuals with specific attitudes about the environment. If it's a large enough sample, it represents the whole country pretty accurately.
 

Rosemarie said:
People are not encouraged to be happy these days. Self-pity is the way to go....so many celebs are declaring their personal angst..you are nobody if you don't have 'issues' of some kind.
The results of these polls depend on who answers them, so it doesn't give a realistic picture. Miserable people probably wouldn't feel inclined to take part!
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Rosemarie, I've spent a fair amount of time in the UK, and people do seem a lot less happy there.
 
I think we're afraid we'll be tempting fate if we say we're happy. If we seem content something may happen to spoil it.
 

fuzzybuddy said:
"Roughly 95% of Americans who live in high-income households, who identify as Republicans and who are married say they are satisfied with their personal life -- and about three in four among each of these groups are very satisfied."

Duh, if you have money to burn, and you are married without a care, you are "very satisfied"? I don't believe this poll is a good indicator of how most of the nation feels. "Satisfied" is a pretty nebulous term it's right up there with "happy". Again, what exactly is "personal life"? If you look at the results, the numbers are generally in the 80% range for the vast majority of the time..
Sorry, I don't believe 90% of Americans are that content with their lives. And I believe this "poll" is more political propaganda than fact.
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Here's the methodology. This is a Gallup poll -- I'm not aware of the Gallup organization having a particular political axe to grind.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2-15, 2020, with a random sample of 1,014 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
 
A few points:

This is a Gallup poll. It's not sponsored by anyone.

It's been going on for four decades.

It is a random poll with a very large sample size.
 
Sunny said:
I don't think wealth even factors in. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that it's better (obviously!) not to be poor. But it's also better not to be very wealthy. From what I've seen, heard, and read all my life, the rich don't seem to have any more happiness than anyone else. Wealth isn't what makes you happy. People living in big, luxurious homes are not particularly any happier than anyone else.

I think you do have to have a reasonable amount of money, enough to live comfortably in a decent, safe neighborhood, with enough for all the necessities of life, and then some extras as well. Enough so you don't have to keep thinking about money all the time. (Which both the very rich and the very poor seem to be doing.)

What is important to me? Good health, love and interaction with my family, good friends in my daily life, enjoying happy memories, good music, occasional travel, clubs and activities that I enjoy. And being able to do good things for others.
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I think you do have to have a reasonable amount of money, enough to live comfortably in a decent, safe neighborhood, with enough for all the necessities of life, and then some extras as well.

You just described being wealthy, at least in comparison to the rest of the world, and to 99.9 percent of all the people who preceded us on this planet.
 
Buckeye said:
Count me in as a part of the 90%. :)
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That would normally be a good thing. But some posters here see it as a sign of indifference to income inequality or to global warming. Or that it means, God forbid, that you have enough money to live on.
 
JimBob1952 said:
Er, it's a poll. They didn't pick out specific individuals with specific attitudes about the environment. If it's a large enough sample, it represents the whole country pretty accurately.
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Not what I claimed.

I just used that as an example of the general, self-only-caring attitudes of, who I believe, are the kinds of people described in the OP.

People who can blissfully ignore the problems of the world and society as long as they have their own personal comforts.
 
Jim W. said:
Not what I claimed.

I just used that as an example of the general, self-only-caring attitudes of, who I believe, are the kinds of people described in the OP.

People who can blissfully ignore the problems of the world and society as long as they have their own personal comforts.
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If you're saying that no one should be personally happy given all the world's problems, I respectfully disagree.

A lot of people with "the answers" to the world's problems have the wrong answers.
 
JimBob1952 said:
Any particular reasons? A telephone poll of over a thousand people usually has a high degree of accuracy.
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I don't remember what was on my mind when I posted it. I think probably that in countries in the world assessments we always turn in extremely low happiness ratios as compared to Scandinavian and even Third World countries. Of course, Scandinavia, I believe, has high suicide rates. Sorry, JB, really don't remember exactly.
 
retiredtraveler said:
Yeah. Fuzzybuddy called you out on this. It's not 90% of Americans. It's 90% of a small group. Have you ever read that stats based on all groups. Millenials, Gen X, Gen Z, boomers? Much different results.
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You clearly don't understand how polls work.

It's 90 percent of a representative sample of all Americans. And it's been done every year for four decades. And by the way, there are breakdowns of different groups in the polling statistics.
 
Pepper said:
I don't remember what was on my mind when I posted it. I think probably that in countries in the world assessments we always turn in extremely low happiness ratios as compared to Scandinavian and even Third World countries. Of course, Scandinavia, I believe, has high suicide rates. Sorry, JB, really don't remember exactly.
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We don't come in "extremely low." We rank about 15th to 20th. It's much easier for Denmark -- small, rich and homogeneous -- to be "happy" than it is for a huge, diverse country like the US. Even so we outrank the UK, Germany, France or Spain.
 
Let
JimBob1952 said:
We don't come in "extremely low." We rank about 15th to 20th. It's much easier for Denmark -- small, rich and homogeneous -- to be "happy" than it is for a huge, diverse country like the US. Even so we outrank the UK, Germany, France or Spain.
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Let me amend my post. We keep slipping in the rankings and now are at #19. So we are behind Germany and the UK. Still pretty good for a big, diverse place with a lot of issues to resolve.
 
This is a very poorly designed poll, and if it really is a Gallup poll, I'm disappointed in them. That list includes all sorts of things that appear to be proving something, but in fact prove nothing.

A higher proportion of Republicans are satisfied with their lives than Democrats? Well, how about if you ask whether a poorer group of people tend to be less satisfied? (And, big surprise, a larger percentage of that group are Democrats?) What does their political affiliation have to do with whether they are satisfied with their lives?

OK, maybe rich vs. poor doesn't prove it, how about white vs. minority groups? More of the minorities are Democrats, so does that drag party affiliation into the mix? You might as well say, "People with blue eyes are happier." And then, out of that group with blue eyes, see how many of them are Republican, vs. people with brown eyes. Therefore, being Republican makes them happier?

If this really is a Gallup poll, they've come a long way down in my estimation. Maybe it's just an attempt to make a ridiculous political point. Or, if all those factors are just random, it's not really a "poll," it's a mishmash.
 
Sunny said:
This is a very poorly designed poll, and if it really is a Gallup poll, I'm disappointed in them. That list includes all sorts of things that appear to be proving something, but in fact prove nothing.

A higher proportion of Republicans are satisfied with their lives than Democrats? Well, how about if you ask whether a poorer group of people tend to be less satisfied? (And, big surprise, a larger percentage of that group are Democrats?) What does their political affiliation have to do with whether they are satisfied with their lives?

OK, maybe rich vs. poor doesn't prove it, how about white vs. minority groups? More of the minorities are Democrats, so does that drag party affiliation into the mix? You might as well say, "People with blue eyes are happier." And then, out of that group with blue eyes, see how many of them are Republican, vs. people with brown eyes. Therefore, being Republican makes them happier?

If this really is a Gallup poll, they've come a long way down in my estimation. Maybe it's just an attempt to make a ridiculous political point. Or, if all those factors are just random, it's not really a "poll," it's a mishmash.
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Responses to this poll are very interesting, to say the least. I'll leave it at that.
 
JimBob1952 said:
If you're saying that no one should be personally happy given all the world's problems, I respectfully disagree.

A lot of people with "the answers" to the world's problems have the wrong answers.
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No, that's not what I'm saying.

I just think, based on my observations of over the decades, that a lot of people, especially males, just don't give much of a crap about anything that doesn't directly affect their daily lives and their pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment, whatever form it may take, be it, sports, making money, chasing women, etc, etc, etc.

I think those people probably make up a significant portion of that blissful 90%.

Of course, it's possible to still be basically happy with one's life and still have concerns about the problems of the world and society etc. I'm pretty happy and satisfied with life even though the state of larger issues greatly concerns me. But I still think that the people who never think about such things make up the majority of the people the poll referred to.

I would suggest also, that anyone who thinks they "know" that certain answers are the wrong ones just because they disagree with them, probably don't "know" anymore about what the right ones are than those who they claim have the wrong ones.

It's all just a matter of opinion, just like these posts.
 
.Sorry, JimBob1952,. One of your first threads drew posts, which you weren't expecting. You must know that people's "happiness" is closely correlated to their financial situation. And "happiness" can mean many things to many people.
 
Not to worry about finances and to spend money to enjoy life is a great way to have happiness.
 

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