Passage one

The factors that add up to a happy life for most people are not what we typically hear about.Things like earning a master’s degree don’t make people happy over an extended period of time.Rather, the key to happiness, and the difference between happy and unhappy Americans, is a life that reflects values and practices like, hard work, marriage, charity, and freedom.

Work

When more than 1,000 people across the country were asked in 2002, "If you were to get enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life, would you stop working?" fewer than a third of the Americans answered yes.Contrary to widely held opinion, most Americans like or even love their work. In 2002 an amazing 89 percent of workers said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs. This isn't true just for those with high-paying, highly skilled jobs but for all workers across the country. And the percentage is almost exactly the same among those with and without collegedegrees and among those working for private companies, nonprofit organizations, and the government.For most Americans, job satisfaction is nearly equivalent to life satisfaction. Among those people who say they are very happy in their lives, 95 percent are also satisfied with their jobs. Furthermore, job satisfaction would seem to be causing overall happiness, not the other way around.

Marriage & Family

In 2004, 42 percent of married Americans said they were very happy. Just 23 percent of never-married people said this. Overall, married people were six times more likely lo say that they were very happy than to report that they were not too happy. And generally speaking, married women say they're happy more often than married men.

Marriage isn’t just associated with happiness --it brings happiness, at least for a lot of us. One 2003 study that followed 24,000 people for more than a decade documented a significant increase in happiness after people married. For some, the happiness increase wore off in a few years, and they ended up back at their premarriage happiness levels. But for others, it lasted as long as a lifetime.What about having kids? While children, on their own, don't appear to raise the happiness level (they actually tend to slightly lower the happiness of a marriage), studies suggest that children arc almost always part of an overall lifestyle. of happiness, which is likely to include such things as marriage and religion.CharityWe've all heard that money doesn't buy happiness, and that’s certainly true. But there is one way to get it: Give money away.

The evidence is clear that gifts to charitable organizations and other worthy causes bring substantial life satisfaction to the givers. If you want $50 in authentic happiness today Just donate it to a favorite charity.People who give money to charity are 43 percent more likely than nongivers to say they're very happy. Volunteers are 42 percent more likely to be very happy than nonvolunteers. It doesn’t matter whether the gifts of money go to churches or concerts; religious giving and unreligious giving leave people equally happy, and far happier than people who don't give. Even donating blood, an especially personal kind of giving, improves our attitude. Fundamentally, the more people give, the happier they get.

Freedom

In fact, freedom and happiness are intimately related: People who consider themselves free are a lot happier than those who don't. In 2000 the General Social Survey revealed that people who personally feel "completely free" or "very free” were twice as likely as those who don't to say they’re very happy about their lives.Not all types of freedom are the same in terms of happiness, however. Researchers have shown that economic freedom brings happiness, as does political and religious freedom. On the other hand, moral freedom ----a lack of constraints on behavior. ----does not. People who feel they have unlimited moral choices in their lives when it comes to matters of sex or drugs, for example, tend to be unhappier than those who do not feel they have so many choices in life.

Lessons for America

The data tell us that what matters most for happiness is not having a lot of things but having healthy values. Without these values，our jobs and our economy will bring us joyless riches. The facts can help remind us of what we should be paying attention to, as individuals and as families, if we want to be happy. Our happiness is simply too important to us -- and to America -- to do anything less.

What will probably bring about overall happiness?