------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (January 2007)
Avner Offer, _The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being
in the United States and Britain since 1950_. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006. xviii + 454 pp. $45 (cloth), ISBN:
0-19-820853-2
Reviewed for EH.NET by John F. Helliwell, Department of Economics,
University of British Columbia.
This insightful book provides a fresh and refreshing new look at life
in the United States and Britain over the past half century. Many of
the chapters have appeared previously, but in all cases the work has
been carefully chosen and revised to support the venture at hand. By
shrewdly combining reviews of the scientific well-being literature
with detailed analysis of particular industries (especially autos,
advertising, and consumer appliances) and aspects of personal
behavior (driving, obesity, mating and family commitment), Offer
shows how much more of human behavior becomes explicable, and open to
fresh policy perspectives, when the well-springs of human behavior
and the determinants of individual decisions are treated as objects
of research rather than dismissed by assumption.
With more than 1400 items in the bibliography, Offer's survey of a
vast and varied literature tracking well-being and its determinants
over the past fifty years provides many guideposts for scholars
wishing to find out what has been going on in this important domain.
He is particularly good at weaving diverse strands of evidence
together, and using their combined weight to support his conclusions.
Offer's review of how people actually make decisions -- often
myopically, and paying much heed to family, friends, neighbors and
the media (sometimes through genuine altruism and regard for others,
but sometimes with an envious peek at what the Joneses are driving
these days), provides just the right background for his very detailed
histories of eating habits, household appliances, and the origin of
fins and the Edsel in the 1950s U.S. auto industry. By combining
psychological evidence with historical case studies and statistical
analysis from several sectors and decades, Offer effectively explains
what is often called the "Easterlin Paradox," that average measures
of life satisfaction in Britain and the United States have remained
flat over the past half century while average real per capita GDP has
soared. From Offer's review, there are several elements to the
answer. It is partly distribution, with much of the income gains
accruing at the top end, where they are often dissipated in the
negative-sum game of status pursuit, partly the increased commercial
exploitation of consumer myopia (credit card approvals in every day's
mail), partly an overload of the wrong sorts of information about how
life is and should be lived (TV being a principal culprit here) and
partly a decline in the extent to which individuals are connected and
committed to each other, as friends, spouses, parents, children,
schoolmates, workmates, neighbors and society writ large. All of
these trends have been noted and documented before. The contribution
of Offer's book, and the literature he surveys, is to show how these
various developments have played out, to estimate their consequences
for well-being, and to relate these well-being effects to those that
might plausibly be expected to flow from higher incomes. This is a
refreshingly far cry from the more usual economic histories of
advanced economies, driven mainly by the measurement and analysis of
the determinants of factor accumulation, output and productivity.
When Offer tries at the end of the book to draw out the implications
of his analysis, he finds it easier to conclude that the challenge of
affluence has been mishandled than to think of specific policy
changes that might have produced higher levels of well-being in
Britain and the United States. He argues, I think correctly, that
individuals, families and governments are all likely to do better
jobs of supporting and improving the well-being of themselves and
others if they understand more clearly the consequences of what they
are doing. The hedonic treadmill is wasteful, but it is best
abandoned by choice rather than fiat, since well-being is most
improved when individuals and communities can set challenges for
themselves, and take credit for achieving their objectives. Many
government policies, by emphasizing the accumulation of incomes
rather than the value of strong and resilient families and
communities, may have contributed to welfare loss through unintended
consequences.
Once the well-being literature, which Offer surveys so well, is taken
seriously, then every public and private decision takes on a
different cast. Re-thinking is required of instruments and
objectives, and especially recognition of the benefits of community
structures in which individuals and families feel themselves to be
effectively engaged in the pursuit of their joint destinies. As Offer
puts it, well-being "... is a balance between our own needs and those
of others, on whose goodwill and approbation our own well-being
depends." His book provides invaluable insights to illuminate, but
not simplify, decisions that could improve well-being.
John F Helliwell is Research Fellow and Program Co-Director of the
Canadian Institute of Advanced Research Program in "Social
Interactions, Identity and Well-Being." He is also Research Associate
of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Professor Emeritus of
Economics at the University of British Columbia. Recent books include
_Globalization and Well-Being_ (UBC Press 2002).
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Published by EH.Net (January 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived
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