Andrés Oppenheimer: economic growth must go hand in hand with an increase in happiness

The Argentine journalist Andres Oppenheimer has done a social and political analysis to decipher where the keys to the happinessthis at a time when populism of all kinds is emerging as a result of a wave of discontent sweeping the country. planet.

“We must insist on economic growth, on the fight against populism and corruption, but to this we have to add the fight against discontent,” Oppenheimer said in an interview with EFE on the occasion of “How to get out of the hole”his most recent publication and which he will present this Tuesday at the Miami Book Fair.

The social explosion experienced in 2019 in Chile, a country at that time with the highest economic growth rate in Latin America, was the starting point of the program host “Oppenheimer presents” of CNN en Español to investigate the reasons that explain the record rates of dissatisfaction not only in that region but throughout the planet.

In his book, the author brings up an annual survey on happiness and emotions carried out by the Gallup firm in 137 countries, and which in 2022 found that the rate of people who declared themselves angry or stressed is 33%, a considerable increase compared to 24% of 2006.

“There is a growing increase in unhappiness in recent years”stressed the journalist, who as a result of this panorama, paradoxically at times of great social and scientific advances, set out to travel the world to investigate what social factors undermine community happiness and what government policies promote it.

And he discovered, for example, that in India there are official programs to teach children to be happier, which include meditation classes and sessions to improve tolerance for failure, the latter based on real-life cases like that of the soccer star. Lionel Messi.

He also found that the organization Step Up Nigeria organizes sessions that teach minors how to combat corruption, one of the biggest problems of that African nation, and that in the United Kingdom for ten years they have measured happiness with questions during the census, which which allows them to later develop outlined initiatives.

Happiness and joy are not the same

In “How to get out of the hole”Oppenheimer differentiates between joy, something temporary, and what he calls “life satisfaction”which goes hand in hand with a decent job, financial savings, and living in democracy and away from corruption.

“Joy is a fleeting phenomenon, life satisfaction is much more lasting,” The journalist emphasizes a variable in which Nordic countries such as Finland are leaders, a nation that also has the lowest suicide rate compared to the European average.

In the Gallup study, the happiest countries in the world (from the perspective of life satisfaction) are precisely Finland, Denmark and Iceland, which have been in the top positions for years, while the United States is ranked 15th. and Spain at 32.

“It is no coincidence that the most economically disastrous and corrupt countries like Venezuela are in the last positions”said Oppenheimer, who emphasizes that Cuba is not part of this study because it does not allow Gallup pollsters to enter.

Technological advances play a role in the pursuit of happiness, for good and bad, as the journalist clarifies, who brings up the addiction to social networks, which has caused “a huge problem of youth depression throughout the world.”

A technological development that, on the other hand, has a positive contribution, such as the possibility of, thanks to data engineering, finding “focuses of discontent” to develop targeted public policies, as well as address the wave of loneliness among older adults.

The above are problems, the author warns, which “They translate into illness, hospital costs, deaths and a collective bad vibe that affects us all.”

What is the recipe to get out of the well of unhappiness? The journalist starts from a basic premise such as the growth of the economy, and in this he criticizes cases such as that of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has “relativized” its unfulfilled promise of growth 4% annual with an assumption “increased happiness” in the country.

Living in democracy and fighting corruption are other essential columns from which public policies can be developed to increase happiness, he added.