Relativity and happiness

I learnt some interesting things this weekend...some of the latest research in Neuroeconomics and relativity. What do people care about? It seems they care very much if someone beats them in a game of skill but not so much when its a game of luck (Aldo Rustichini, a professor at Minnesota did this experiment using fMRI machines and Minnesota students). So, lets say someone wins a lottery, research shows that they are not very happy in the first few years as perhaps they attribute it to luck rather than skill (and it would be difficult to argue with that, unless choosing random numbers requires skill). But after some years they convince themselves that they do deserve it after all, and become happy. What are the implications of this? If you want to increase happiness, this means the state should equalize skills rather than money... i.e. what outcomes SIGNAL about skills matters more than itself. Together with the recent book by Richard Nisbett “Intelligence and How to Get It," ( see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=iq&st=cse) this suggests that equalizing educational opportunities is the key to equalizing "skills"... intrinsic talent is really not that important as was always thought...

Another interesting piece of research by Claudia Senik in Paris suggests that the inequality in levels of happiness reported by couples is a very good predictor of whether the relationship lasts or not: so the longest lived marriages are those where either both partners are equally happy or equally unhappy! You know the old saying "misery loves company"...well misery loves company but only if its equally miserable, you dont want to be with someone who is excrutiatingly happy while you are dying...
(see e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=iq&st=cse)....

Finally, I never thought there was anything good about the sex ratio imbalance in China or India (in 2006, there were 120 boys born for every 100 girls, in India 930 women to 1000 men) but a new theory and some supportive evidence claims that it is indeed the imbalance that is responsible for the high Chinese savings rate...this is how the logic works: the competition for young women to get married to, is getting harsher given the imbalance. Hence parents of boys start saving early so that they can compete in the bride price and showing high status for the boy when he gets married...at the same time, since in China the boy and his wife look after parents in old age (no social security), while girls go away, this also increases the incentives of the girls family to save more for their old age! Hence savings goes up as a whole assuming that people have children at the same rate as before: save during the first 20 years then splurge...