Education and happiness
Empirical studies have usually found positive effect on happiness on education, even after the income level has been controlled. The main reasons why education should improve happiness and the major determinants of demand of education are humans require a level of capabilities to make public appearance with confidence. Secondly, obtaining knowledge offers direct utility per se, just like a normal good. Also, education can be viewed as a signal information is revealed through schooling. People obtain indirect utility through having prestige. In addition promotion of job protection, employability and labor markets participation is achieved by education. Education is also correlated positively with earnings (Becker, 1994). It helps one to get more interesting jobs and accelerating promotions (Oswald and Blancflower, 1994), provides more independence and autonomy enhances participation in decisions and reduces routines (Albert and Davia, 2005). Finally, education has positive effect on health because more educated people are expected to lead healthier lifestyles, and they do visit there doctor as and when required.
There are a set of constraints that that limit access to education major one being family resources. The demand for education is higher when there are low lending rates, cheaper tuition fees, higher expected returns, and higher family resources. In addition parent imitation, territorial segregation and assertive mating can play a significant role in persistence in education intergeneration-wise.
Despite all the positive effects, the empirical evidence on the relationship between life satisfaction and education is not conclusive. Some studies (e.g. Oswald and Clark, 1996) have found opposite results after controlling the income factor, more people report a lower level of satisfaction. However two factors could influence the results. First, the level of education raises job expectations which are harder to fulfill. Over qualification for a job brings frustrations for people. When people hold lobs jobs that require lesser level of education than they are schooled, it can be considered a waste of resources and inefficient. Second, income dispersion increases with education level. Comparison between people who have the same education level but deferring salary scale can produce negative effect.
Education is one definitely one form of investment, having both non-economic and economic costs on one hand and benefits on the other. The comparative advantage of better education reduces with rise in the average education levels increase. When access to education is lower, the returns produced on education are higher. This is the most likely reason why Oswald and Clark (1996) find a negative effect on education on happiness.
The academic journey may extend to last the entire life of an individual depending on many varying factors, ranging from intellectual ability to an individuals zeal in academics. But what drives an individual to go to school and acquire formal education by means of reading up to thousands of pages most of which, like mathematics, they may find mind-cracking and hard to comprehend, leave alone to see their applications in real life Why go to school in the first place This is a question that has at least at some point in time lingered in the minds of most of those have gone to school and even those who havent and more importantly to researchers.
But the reasons for obtaining formal education are known to all, or so it is perceived. Go to school, pass your examinations highly and eventually you will harvest the sweet fruits of education. There is little doubt that anyone has never been told or heard these words spoken about education. It is also widely accepted that formal education makes an individual a better person in general terms it is what makes the whole lot of difference between a civilized person (and society) and an uncivilized one. In other words, going through an education system is aimed at producing a well-rounded individual in skills and expertise capable of constructively taking part in economic production activities that will contribute to the overall well-being of the general society.
Arguably the most important element of formal education to an individual is the fact that at the end of many years of toiling in school, the person expects to be sufficiently rewarded by landing a high-paying job which will in turn give him financial prosperity. But is this usually the case This paper explores the role education plays in achieving life-satisfaction, and the general attitude towards education in the society.
Happiness
Many contemporary investigations of happiness are based on subjective determination of well-being. Researchers ask people about their present feelings and there hopes about the future. From this a yardstick of happiness is determined in a particular place and time. This kind of an approach is founded on the belief of existence of feeling bad and feeling good and that it can be identified and people talk about it (Layard, 2005, p.12-3). In the recent past, economists have become increasingly interested in the topic of happiness, triggered mainly by the publication of a paper by Richard Easterlin (1974), in which the author suggested how policy makers should maximize happiness as the main objective function instead of consumption, income and economic growth. As a matter of fact, self reported-happiness (average) was shown to be equal across poor and rich nations and that well-being is not necessarily raised by economic growth. By analyzing time series and cross section data for some selected countries, Easterlin observed that there was little correlation between the variables of interest (real GDP per capita and self-declared happiness). These unexpected findings are what is referred to as The Easterlin Paradox. Many other experiments carried out later have shown insignificant deviations from Easterlins findings.
What makes people happy
People give fairly consistent answers when asked to do so by investigators. For example, an influential study by Lane (2000) showed powerful links between companionship and subjective feeling of individuals well-being. It was found that people gain happiness through the kind relationships they have with other persons.
So does education bring us happiness The answer to this pertinent question lies in both yes and no. After attending school and passing ones examinations, a person is likely to land a good lob and have financial prosperity and achieve some level of happiness. Yet this does not guarantee the said individual eternal happiness. The person comes to realize that happiness is not achieved from just a single source.
Much attention has not been directed towards the relationship between happiness and education. Researchers such as Stutzer and Frey (2002, p.59) confine themselves to observation that an individuals level of education has little bearing to happiness. Rather, a high correlation between education with income has been established. By allowing a better and quicker adaptation to dynamic environment, education may contribute to ones degree of happiness. But with advancement in education comes higher aspiration levels (as explained by income adaptation theory). Yet another theory stresses the importance of comparative income rather than absolute income. Riches do bring happiness, provided you are richer than other people (Layard, 1980, p.737). It has been established that when the highly educated are hit by unemployment, they tend to become unhappier as compared to those with low level of education.
One of the most interesting features of discussions about educational reform is the almost total absence of meaningful conversation around what may make people happy and their well-being. In its place a lot of debate in form of how it may lead to growth of the economy, which has already been observed to often have a negative effect on peoples prosperity and happiness, takes place. Reforming education would be difficult if we fail to challenge and cherish the human heart that is the source of human teaching(Palmer, 1998, p.4). He continues to argue that not much will be achieved unless the question of aims is addressed.
Until recently aims-talk figured prominently in educational theory, and most educational systems had some sort of statement of aims. Today much discussion in market democracies is dominated by a concern with standards - and the reason given for this emphasis is almost always economic. If we have to believe that individuals should have the chance to live fulfilling and happy lives then this simply will not work.
We both need to rescue aims-talk - and to infuse it with a concern for flourishing, he continues.
In the 1970s, cognitive psychologists began studying judgment and economic decision making. These studies took a different approach from the ones suggested earlier. They took expected-utility maximization and Bayesian probability judgments as benchmarks, and used conformity or deviation from these benchmarks as a way to theorize about cognitive mechanisms. Important psychology of this sort was done by Ward Edwards in the 1950s, and later by Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, and many others. Because the output of this research often consisted of psychological principles or constructs that could be expressed in simple formal terms, this sort of psychology provided a way to model bounded rationality which is more like standard economics than the more radical departure that earlier researchers had in mind. Much of behavioral economics consists of trying to incorporate this kind of psychology into economics.
A good illustration of how the economic predictions are improved by cognitive psychology is prospect theory which was proposed by Kahneman and Tversky as an alternative to the established expected utility theory. The core principle in prospect theory is that people adapt to hedonic sensations in making decisions rather than the overall economic sense, and therefore, utilities are determined by gains and losses from some reference point, rather than by overall wealth. Many studies suggest behavior toward losses and gains is different in two ways. First, losses are disliked as much as two times equal-sized gains (loss-aversion), and secondly people often seek risk in the territory of losses when they can break even (i.e., they reach the their reference point), while they avoid risk in the gains domains (the reflection effect). In addition, in expected utility theory, attitudes toward risk are expressed solely by curvature of the utility function. In prospect theory (and many other alternative theories), risk attitudes are also influence by nonlinear weighting of probabilities-for example, a person could buy a lottery ticket, even if her utility function for money outcomes is concave, if she overweighs the small chance of winning. Indeed, the hypothesis that small probabilities are given too much weight (which is backed by many experiments) can explain why people with concave utility for gains would love high-skewness lotteries with a tiny chance of winning, and also explains why people who gamble over losses would nonetheless buy insurance against small chances of disastrous losses.
The objective of producing a highly knowledgeable individual is attached little meaning. People aim to go to the most reputable schools not to get the best education but to increase the chances of securing the best jobs available. This fact is aggravated by employers who generally show a bias towards alumni of certain reputable schools and overlooking those from other schools during the process of recruitment of staff. Prospect theory by Kahneman and Tversky captures this scenario very well the decisions people make when choosing what career path to follow and which college to go to is purely hedonic, driven by prospective gains and losses rather than the general wealth the system is designed to instill in individuals.
In conclusion, education has an important role in life of humans by indirectly and directly contributing positively on self-esteem, self-confidence, and derivation of pleasure from acquiring knowledge. But focusing on economic growth through acquisition of education alone will run the risk of depressing the happiness of many members of a society significantly. The acquisition of general knowledge and skills-though paramount, is not good enough. Educators and trainers have a basic but critical role in molding dispositions. That is to say people need various virtues or dispositions in order to be happy and flourish. They are able to fit all that into a single coherent whole.