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Hope, Despair, and Life Outcomes : Lessons From The New Science of Wellbeing
We live in increasingly polarized and unequal societies, not only when it comes to incomes and opportunities, but also in terms of how people feel about their lives. Why should economists and other social scientists care about how people feel? Feelings of subjective well-being, such as happiness and hope, have become important metrics in these disciplines because they predict health, productivity, and labor market outcomes, among other things. Carol Graham’s most recent research is about the importance of hope, and why we should consider it an additional independent dimension of well-being. Hope, which is in part genetically determined and in part shaped by the environments that individuals develop in, is perhaps the most important dimension of well-being for future outcomes. Based on her recent research which focuses on tracking trends in lost hope as a key factor in understanding the rising numbers of “deaths of despair” and premature mortality in the United States, this lecture will review empirical evidence and research-based lessons that suggest possible policies for restoring hope in populations where it has been lost.
