[peterwwillis]

I think there's a difference in your example, though. When a poor person grows to become a well-off person, they can still have an identity crisis as they come to terms with the culture clash of their old way of life [and friends and family] and a new environment surrounded by the well-off. They'd be more satisfied with what they have, but still depressed for other reasons.

It's better to take your original example - Grandpa vs Me - as the lens for the original survey. They had way more serious problems to deal with over a long period of time. We've had a recession and fairly progressive politics that has improved the lives of many (though at the same time making life worse for non-white and low-income people).

I also like to consider how biased these surveys run by "App" companies are. Consider all the people who don't have smartphones, or don't have the leisure time to fill out "happiness" surveys - like most young black Americans, who will disproportionately be more worried about getting shot by police, going to jail, making enough money to pay for food/"the poor tax"/teenage families/housing/etc. They're lucky if they make it to their late 20s. Or being classified an illegal immigrant, and therefore having absolutely no rights but still needing to make a living to support yourself and your family. So some may be unhappy, but for radically different reasons than those polled, like systemic racism, voting restrictions, lack of protection of human rights, or the oligarchy of the super-rich continuing to grow a larger lower class.

[Domenic_S]

Right, the App surveys suffer from selection bias in a huge way. It's almost the pinnacle of what Silicon Valley gets made fun of for, right: "you're so dissatisfied with your comparatively cushy life that we'll make an app for that!"

Yet we've seen [0] that our happiness is relative to our peers. Is the happiest illegal immigrant better off (happiness-wise) than the saddest millionaire? We build our floor on our parents' (families' etc) ceiling. If we build a craptastic studio apartment, it doesn't matter if it's on the 300th floor, we're still unhappy. I guess that's the empathetic way to look at it? Sociology is hard.

[0] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/asa-mcb080805...