

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness [pdf] - amichail
http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Paradox%20of%20declining%20female%20happiness.pdf

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byrneseyeview
Debunked:
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004965.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004965.html)

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axiom
Maybe someone with a background in sociology can answer this, but looking at
the trends we see that the paper is talking about a change of "happiness" of
just one or two percent over 35 years. Is this really significant? Just
looking at the trends, it seems the oscillations from year to year are much
higher than that.

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amichail
Well, it's still interesting to note that women are not happier given all the
advances they have made with respect to the workplace.

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byrneseyeview
Changes in income don't make people happier in the long term. See Hedonic
Adaptation: <http://mit.edu/people/shanefre/HedonicAdaptation.pdf>

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amichail
In the case of women, I think it's more that you are replacing one set of
problems with another set of possibly more severe problems.

The reason we are on this forum in the first place is that we don't like the
most common form of work, where you are not in control.

So why would you expect women to be happier when they transition from just
being a housewife to also (mostly) working for others?

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byrneseyeview
I'm not aware of any studies about happiness and its relation to freedom, so I
don't know if that's true. My anecdotal impression is that caring for a child
full-time is extremely difficult -- which is why the daycare industry exists.

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thingsilearned
More independence/freedom breads unhappiness. This doesn't mean its bad, or
the wrong direction. It simply means additional measures need to be taken.

Erich Fromm's "Escape from Freedom" is a great book on the subject.

