To Anthony Rendon, happiness is serious business

How happy are California residents? It depends on where they live. According to World Happiness Report rankings, the happiest residents live in Alpine, Marin and Placer counties. Most unsatisfied are in Mariposa, Del Norte and Lake counties.

A new California Assembly committee is exploring the reasons why some people are happier with their lives than others. Headed by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes has had two hearings this year.

“We don’t take happiness seriously,” Rendon said. “We think of happiness as some frivolous, silly thing but it’s really the only thing that matters.”

The United Nation’s annual World Happiness Report has ranked countries in terms of their happiness since 2012. Countries in Europe, Asia and South America have studied what makes people happiest, but there has been little focus on the issue here.

“This is an area where California and the United States are very, very far behind the rest of the world at looking at this issue,” Rendon said.

The happiness ranking for California counties was based on Gallup poll data from 2009-2018. Survey respondents were asked to rank their life satisfaction on a scale of 0-10 with 10 being the happiest. Average scores in the state ranged from 7.92 for happy Alpine County to 6.64 for Lake County.

Placer County Board of Supervisors Chair Suzanne Jones isn’t surprised that her county ranked third (7.29). “We can tell by the number of people who want to move to Placer County,” she said. “Lots of transplants are coming are way.”

Residents enjoy natural beauty, including the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Lake Tahoe, Jones said. Good schools, a strong economy, and low crime rate also add to the desirability of the county. Residents are also active and engaged in community groups. “We’re really blessed,” Jones said. “We have good people and a great sense of community.”

“We think of happiness as some frivolous, silly thing but it’s really the only thing that matters.”

Counties like Placer near the top of the state’s happiness ranking have a similar level of happiness to the world’s happiest countries like Finland and Denmark, Oxford economics professor and happiness researcher Jan-Emmanuel De Neve told the Assembly happiness committee in May.

De Neve said having strong personal bonds and social support go a long way to making people happier. Those who have a lot of friends and people to rely on report higher levels of satisfaction. The reasons people report the lowest life satisfaction scores usually involve poverty or mental illness, he said.

He praised the state for taking a look at happiness and examining metrics. “What you measure ultimately gets treasured,” he said.

How people judge the satisfaction of their lives varies from person to person or culture to culture, said Emiliana Simon-Thomas, the science director at the Greater Good Science Center at University of California at Berkeley. Simon-Thomas, who has testified before the Assembly select committee on happiness, said that to some in the West, happiness means entertainment, immediate gratification of desire and consumption. In other parts of the world, happiness can mean fulfilling commitments to family.

Simon-Thomas said it’s a “dire mistake” to think happiness means feeling good all the time.  “Happiness in life is inclusive of life’s inevitable difficulties and challenges,” she said. “No one’s going to get away without irrevocable loss, no one’s going to get away without stress.”

This is why a scientific study of happiness is important, she said. “If we’re only going by popular media and social media as our source of what happiness is, we’re letting ourselves be led astray,” she said.

Simon-Thomas is glad that there is a California committee studying happiness because happier people live longer, healthier lives and are better problem solvers and collaborators with others.

“To my knowledge, there are no disadvantages to happiness in life,” she said. “Optimizing for happiness feels like a no-brainer.”

Rendon thinks legislators should think about what makes people happy first before they start crafting policies. That should be the most important factor rather than an after-thought, he said. For instance, if California legislators managed to give everyone a house and a job and residents were still miserable, they would have failed, he said.

“I think we should let people do things that make them happy,” he said. “If it makes people happy, that’s enough.”

Rendon would like to see more California universities take on the study of happiness. He hopes the select committee will last beyond the end of his term at the end of this year.

He knows some consider happiness studies a lightweight issue and is surprised that he hasn’t received more negative reaction from Republicans.

“I expected a lot more than I got,” he said. “Instead, I’ve got a lot of people interested in it and excited about it.”

Rendon is glad the conversation is now underway.

“For me, this is about starting the discussion and framing it in the right way – not in a New Agey way, but in a serious, quantitative way,” he said. “It’s about starting the discussion.”