Feeling Good About Life In General, Albeit Less So About Some Aspects

Psychologists theorize that each person has a "happiness set point." While external events—a financial windfall, a disabling injury, etc.—can temporarily shift one's mood, it soon reverts to its accustomed state. The Harris Poll's annual "Feel Good Index" suggests the same might be true of the population en masse. Despite the turmoil of recent years, there's been relatively little change in the degree to which Americans feel good about their own lives and the condition of the country. The overall index in the new survey stands at 74 on a scale of 100, based on an amalgam of 16 factors. That differs from the overall number in 1998—"when the economy was booming and long before the attacks of 9/11 or the Iraq war"—by a grand total of one percentage point.Amid this general stability, there has been some flux (though in many cases, not much) in the way respondents rate individual components of the index. People are also far more satisfied with some "feel good" factors than with others. One of the best scores, happily enough, goes to "the quality of your life overall," with 92 percent of adults saying they feel good about this. That's down three points from its 1998 peak, but up three points from last year. The only categories about which more people feel good are "your relations with your family" (98 percent) and "your home" (95 percent). It's noteworthy that the number of people who feel good about "your standard of living" (85 percent this year) is always a bit lower than the number who feel good about their quality of life. Evidently money isn't everything, at least for some folks. Nor, it seems, does overall happiness wholly depend on satisfaction with a spouse or job. Sixty percent feel good about "your job, if you have one," vs. 64 percent last year; 66 percent feel good about "your marriage, if you are married," up from 59 percent last year. Compensating for these less-than-landslide levels of satisfaction are the feel-good figures with respect to "your social life" (91 percent, up from 86 percent last year) and "your health" (88 percent, vs. 85 percent last year).People are more apt to feel good about the personal and local than about the impersonal and national. The lowest score in the index went to "the nation's economy," with just 43 percent saying they feel good about it. Still, 62 percent feel good about their "financial security for the future." Even with an 8-percentage-point gain since last year, a lackluster 55 percent of respondents feel good about "the morals and values of Americans in general." But significantly more of them (77 percent) feel good about "the morals and values of people in your community."

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Feeling Good About Life In General, Albeit Less So About Some Aspects

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver