Ruut Veenhoven, researcher of happiness.

'Money doesn't make you happy, freedom does.

'We are damn happy; partly because of the highly varied and challenging job market.' 
Ruut Veenhoven, who works at Erasmus University Rotterdam, has been researching happiness worldwide for 30 years. From his World Database of Happiness, he concludes that we owe our happiness mainly to the multiple-choice society. 'That forces us to think about what brings the most happiness. Some people put too much in the basket of career.'
You said in an interview that career does not affect happiness. That seems like a bold statement.

'By that, I mean career in the sense of getting higher. Happiness is about being happy. You don't have to spend all your time in boardrooms for that. You do see that people in higher-status professions are slightly happier, but that is probably due to the freedom they have. The correlation between money and happiness is extremely small. In people who get more money, you see a short-term upswing, but after a year that extra happiness is gone. In a poor country, of course, a pay rise does have more effect than here.'

You call that the law of diminishing returns to capital.

'Yes, if you look at a graph of average happiness in countries, you first see it increasing with income, but then it flattens out. You hardly see the happiness difference between rich and very rich.'

Many people do not feel happy in their jobs. It is boring or they suffer from stress, annoying colleagues or an incompetent boss. What would you recommend to those people?
'In certain professions, people are less happy on average; this is mainly in self-control. It could also be that as a person you don't fit into that profession. Then it's better to do something else. Another possibility is that it is in you; that you become unhappy in every job because you are a neurotic. Then quitting your job won't help, because you will take the misery with you. Then visit the RIAGG; and if that doesn't help: too bad.

'If you don't love your job and you see no alternative, you should seek compensation as much as possible. Work a little less or do fun things. After all, happiness is the balance between positive and negative feelings.'

Isn't the pursuit of happiness a hype? It seems driven by commerce with its dream images in advertising. Shouldn't we instead find happiness in intangibles?
'Advertising tries to link consumer goods to happiness, with pictures of smiling people. You can't believe your luck with all those detergents! But few people think washing powder makes you happy.

But surely many people tend to repress their sadness or discontent by shopping?
'Yes, but happiness research shows that the link with material goods is limited. Having your own house or a car does matter. I think the interest in happiness is not so much fuelled by capitalism, but rather structural. When major problems like poverty and oppression are gone, people wonder what else can make them happy.

'Society is increasingly evolving into a multi-choice society; choices are less and less prescribed by family or church. In all these choices, people ask themselves what will make them happiest. In the past, for example, you could have children too soon. The pill made conscious choice possible. Incidentally, research shows that having children makes you slightly less happy; it's all about the balance between pros and cons.'

So money and children don't make you happy. So what does?

'There is a debate among a number of economists about what makes you happy. There is a current that says: friendship, love and family, so we should work a little less. I believe there is some truth in that. Some people put too much in the career basket. That makes them vulnerable when work slows down. It is always wise to keep a reasonable mix.
'But people strike out when they say, "extra income doesn't make you happy, so work doesn't make you happy". No, we are happier than ever in history; I think that is partly because of work. When you have nothing to do, you get bored out of your mind. That's why many housewives take on the double burden of a job. These want to get out and get busy. We are and remain damned happy; I think that is partly because of the highly varied and challenging job market. By automating away boring crap jobs, the quality of work has increased quite a bit.'

Where does happiness perception actually come from? Does it serve a purpose?
'When you use your abilities well, nature rewards that with a good feeling. That psycho-biological mechanism comes from evolution. As a hunter or gatherer, you had to feel fit and be able to run away from a snake or a lion in time. So we are built to function at a reasonably high level of attention. But in the days of agricultural society, boredom struck; you put a potato in the ground and then had to wait a long time for something to come out. That makes one terribly lazy, which is probably why that was not such a happy period for humanity.'
'If you plot humanity's history of happiness in a graph, you see a long-term constant. After the agricultural revolution it collapses, and after the industrial revolution happiness is on the rise again. Not only because goods are now produced much more efficiently, but also because labour is much more varied and therefore in tune with the human need to be busy and stay sharp.'

You also think individualism promotes happiness. But surely in close-knit communities people can feel safe and secure, and thus happy?

'In Japan, people are clearly less happy than in the West. That's probably because of that collectivism; you are very much part of a group there. The boss picks a fiancée for you. A human being is not built on that. Man has lived 95 per cent of his existence as a hunter-gatherer in fairly loose relationships. Travelling around in small groups, they were fairly individualistic, similar to great apes.'

'So we are social animals with a preference for weak and interchangeable bonds. Among hunter-gatherers, serial monogamy was common. With agriculture, people became more dependent on their society, as they had to protect their land and crops. You then rely much more on the group. That is why the influence of the church and the family was strong in the Middle Ages. But humans are not naturally suited to that. So when the industrial revolution allowed people to escape social pressure, they did so. People moved to the city, even though the living conditions there were not so good.'