About
In 2010, I read an article in The Economist titled "The U-Bend of Life" that discussed the findings of recent research in the then emerging field of Happiness Economics. It confidently asserted that happiness reaches a nadir at a global average of 46, and improves strongly and consistently thereafter — a deeply reassuring finding for a then 45 year old battling the storms of middle-age, and one that triggered in me an enduring interest in happiness. A second seminal moment came from another article inThe Economist, this time a report on the paper "The Church, intensive kinship and psychological variation" published in Science in November 2019. This paper argued the improbable, yet oddly compelling, case that the individualistic values system that makes the West so psychologically distinct had its origins in the ban on cousin marriage instituted by the Catholic church in 500 AD. It isn't exactly a straight line from there, but it did ultimately get me wondering: where does culture come from, does it change, and how does it affect happiness.
After a career in public policy, corporate strategy, rail transport, and infrastructure economics, I now have the time to think about those questions — hence this project. These questions seem to sit in the borderlands of a wide range of the social sciences — psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science and, my specialisation, economics — but are central to none. I don't claim to bring a deep expertise in any of these fields. I offer only an enquiring mind and a passion to follow the evidence.
— Derek Harris