5 Happiness factors:
1) Faith
"In general, religious Americans (those who attend a place of worship almost every week or more) are happier than those who rarely or never attend.
The connection between faith and happiness hold regardless of one's religion. All nonpartisan surveys on the subject have found that Christians (Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and others) and Jews,....are far more likely than secularists to say they're happy. It doesn't matter if we measure religious practice in ways other than attendance at worship services. In 2004, 36 percent of people who prayed every day said they were very happy, versus 21 percent of people who never prayed."
2) Work
Contrary to widely held opinion, most American like or even love their work. For most Americans, job satisfaction is nearly equivalent to life satisfaction. Among those people who say they are very happy in their lives, 95 percent are also satisfied with their jobs. Furthermore, job satisfaction would seem to be causing overall happiness, not the other way around."
3) Marriage and Family
"Matrimony has taken a lot of hits since the 1960s. It's been said to hold many people, especially women, back from their full potential to be happy. Don't believe it. In 2004, 42 percent of married Americans said they were very happy. Just 23 percent of never-married people said this.
Overall, married people were six times more likely to say that they were very happy than to report that they were not too happy. And generally speaking, married women say they're happy more often than married men.
What about having kids? While children, on their own, don't appear to raise the happiness level (they actually tend to slightly lower the happiness of a marriage), studies suggest that children are almost always part of an overall lifestyle of happiness. Consider this: While 50 percent of married people of faith who have children consider themselves to be very happy, only 17 percent of nonreligious,unmarried people without kids feel the same way."
4) Charity
"We've all heard that money doesn't buy happiness, and that's certainly true. But there is one way to get it: Give money away. People who give money to charity are 43 percent more likely than non-givers to say they're very happy. Volunteers are 42 percents more likely to be very happy than non volunteers. In essence, the more people give, the happier they get."
5) Freedom
"The founders listed liberty right up there with the pursuit of happiness as an objective that merited a struggle for our national independence. In fact, freedom and happiness are intimately related. Not all types of freedom are the same in terms of happiness, however. Researchers have shown that economic freedom brings happiness, as does political and religious freedom. On the other hand,moral freedom-a lack of constraints on behavior-does not. People who feel they have unlimited moral choices in their lives when it comes to matters of sex or drugs, for example, tend to be unhappier than those who do not feel they have so many choices in life. Americans appear to understand this quite well. When pollsters asked voters in the 2004 Presidential election what the most important issue facing America was, the issue voters chose above all others was 'moral values.' "
Lessons for America
"We must hold our leaders accountable for the facts on happiness and refuse to take it lightly when politicians abridge the values of faith, work, family, charity, and freedom. Our happiness is simply too important to us-and to America-to do anything less."
(Arthur C. Brooks, Reader's Digest, July 08)
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