Management Summary Research Study „Happiness, Higher Wants, and Policy Evaluation”
This study examines whether self-reported happiness or life satisfaction is a reliable metric for evaluating institutions and public policies. Using a dynamic model that brings together two intellectual traditions, the study demonstrates that it need not be. From Arthur Schopenhauer, it takes the insight that our expectations adjust over time: when circumstances improve, we raise the bar, and the initial sense of improvement fades. From Frank Knight, it takes the claim that welfare depends partly on developing more ambitious goals and refined capacities – not merely on satisfying the desires we already have, but on learning to want better and more demanding things. In the model, individuals invest in broadening their outlook and deepening their standards, which is intrinsically valuable but also raises the yardstick by which they judge their own lives. Once such personal development is given positive value, the optimal path involves sustained growth and rising long-run expectations. This can lead people to evaluate their lives more critically, reporting lower satisfaction in surveys even though their lives are better by a broader standard. The study thus formalizes a mechanism through which institutions that foster personal development, such as education systems and meritocratic norms, can improve welfare while appearing harmful in happiness data. The practical implication is that policy appraisal relying solely on survey-based satisfaction should be supplemented by measures of how people’s expectations are changing and by indicators of meaning and personal growth.
Target groups of stakeholders: Policymakers engaged in well-being measurement, economists and philosophers working on welfare economics, cost-benefit analysts, journalists covering education policy and quality of life.
Citation: Berggren, N. (2026). Happiness, higher wants, and policy evaluation. Politics, Philosophy & Economics. Advance online publication.