Monitoring Quality of Life in the U.S. 1972-1996: Is Marketing Helping or Hurting?
نویسنده
چکیده
Subjective happiness has been assessed in the U.S. since 1972 by the General Social Survey (GSS). We examine trends in happiness over the last 25 years, and investigate the objective causes of these trends. We present a model of how objective indicators of QOL (such as GDP/person, crime rates, etc.) affect satisfaction with domains of life, with overall happiness of citizens, and with behavioral consequences of those variables. We are the first to test these relationships, using the time-series of 21 GSS surveys from 1972-1996, composing over 35,000 respondents. The data also allow tests of whether marketing is contributing to happiness, or whether it is detracting from happiness, as claimed by social critics such as Galbraith and Skitowsky. Results show (1) that overall happiness has NOT improved since 1972, (2) that 2 domains of life – finances and job – have shown subjective deterioration in satisfaction, while only one – leisure time – has shown improvement, (3) that annual changes in many objective QOL indicators precede annual changes in subjective satisfaction. The pattern of domain satisfaction is most consistent with Galbraith’s argument that marketing is not increasing overall happiness of citizens in the U.S. It provides a challenge to marketing to demonstrate not just that it improves satisfaction with consumption, but that it improves overall social welfare in the U.S.
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