China has remade the world. STR/AFP via Getty Images
In 2004, an unusual crime wave swept cities around the world. Some called it the great drain robbery. Under cover of darkness, thieves were stripping manholes of their heavy iron covers, leaving streets perforated with sudden drops into sewage tunnels. In a single week, the London borough of Newham lost 93 covers. Aberdeen, in Scotland, saw 130 vanish. Chicago was robbed of 150 in a month. In the Indian city of Kolkata, more than 10,000 manhole covers were reportedly stolen over the course of two months.
These thefts were motivated by a phenomenon that commodity traders call a supercycle, meaning an extended period of high prices for raw materials. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has seen five supercycles, coinciding with major bursts of economic development or war. Those manhole covers had become valuable because the price of iron, an ingredient for the production of steel, was surging. And most of the demand was coming from one country in particular. China was beginning its rise as an industrial giant.
Iron ore was the signal substance of Chinese growth — by 2024, its price was almost 1,000% higher than in 1995 — but all kinds of resources were sucked into the whirlwind: oil and coal, nickel and copper, soybeans and rubber and wool. In recent months, though, analysts have been announcing the end of the two-decade China supercycle. Chinese iron ore consumption is starting to come down, along with steel production. Some reckon its demand for oil may be peaking too. This does not mean that China will stop growing, but the economic patterns are shifting.
As Donald Trump’s tariff experiment now lurches into an escalating trade war with China, it is worth considering the epochal shift that brought us here. The supercycle was an epic chapter carved into the material substrate of our world, reverberating in every corner of the globe. It has raised China, in the space of a generation, from a poor and largely rural society to a superpower that is competing at the frontiers of technology, while controlling the most important resources for the future. It has transformed the developing world. It is implicated with the rise of Trump and, in various ways, with European weakness.
“If you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country,” declared Trump in 2018. The British government seems to agree, as it haggles with Jingye, a Chinese company, to save the UK’s last two remaining blast furnaces. These strands of history can be traced back to the start of the century, when those manhole covers were being cut up into scrap, shipped across oceans, melted down, and fed into Chinese steelmaking convertors.
What set the supercycle in motion? Until the Eighties, China still measured affluence through the humble quartet of a bicycle, a wrist watch, a sewing machine, and a radio. By the turn of the century, however, the country was reaching an inflection point. Its GDP was approaching $4,000 per person, the level at which a society’s demand for resources tends to leap upwards, as consumers buy more manufactured goods and governments build more infrastructure. Crucially, though, China’s transition was supercharged by global trade in the decades following the Cold War. With its enormous, cheap labour force, and its authoritarian government, it was perfectly positioned to become the world’s factory. Just as China was reaching the $4,000-per-head threshold, it gained admission to the World Trade Organisation.
China began sucking in the world’s resources like a drain emptying a bath, turning them into vast cities and infrastructure projects as well as products to be shipped back out to the world. What happened next is best captured in numbers, since language can scarcely convey its sheer scale. In 1995, China’s economic output was one-tenth the size of America’s. By 2021, it was three quarters. Over the same period, the Chinese share of world manufacturing output went from 5% to 30%. Whereas just one-in-five Chinese people lived in cities at the turn of the century, today more than three in five do. So rapid was this urbanisation that, between 2000-2010, China’s villages disappeared at a rate of 300 per day.
In 2003, China had no high-speed rail, but by 2011 it had the world’s biggest network. The country produced more steel in two years than Britain has in almost two centuries. Similarly, China poured more concrete between 2018-20 than the United States has done in its entire history. China melts and refines almost half the world’s copper supply. Chinese oil imports, at 11 million barrels per day, are more or less equivalent to the entire output of Saudi Arabia. China burns 30% more coal than the rest of the world combined, and its consumption is still rising. This means that the Chinese energy system is, by far, the biggest factor determining the future of the climate.
If global trade helped to set this engine running, the Chinese Communist Party pushed it into higher gears. Rather than directing the proceeds of growth towards social safety nets or consumer spending power, the CCP has, until recently, sought to funnel them back into material production. This strategy has helped China become utterly dominant in key supply chains underpinning the modern world, but it has also resulted in prodigious waste and, ultimately, instability. The country’s enormous, debt-swollen property sector, which went into crisis in 2021, threatens to drag the entire economy down. Dozens of concrete “ghost cities” are still awaiting residents, though some are so poorly constructed that they might collapse first. An overworked population faces one of the world’s most daunting fertility deficits. Polluted industrial areas have poisoned their residents and spawned ecological catastrophes.
But Chinese economic development has not only taken place within China itself. A large share of the resources fuelling China’s growth has come from poor and developing regions of the world, whether Brazilian iron ore and soybeans, Congolese copper, Malaysian rubber, or Indonesian nickel. Many of these places have received big Chinese investments in infrastructure, and have become markets for Chinese construction firms and manufactured goods.
The results have been especially dramatic in the world’s poorest continent: Africa. China is the leading purchaser of a wide spectrum of African metals and fossil fuels, and it imports large quantities of African food products, timber and tobacco (China has almost one-third of the world’s smokers). Chinese companies, many of them state-owned, have built more than 300 dams, almost five-dozen power plants, and thousands of kilometres of roads and railways right across Africa. They have constructed an immense apparatus of pipelines and other facilities to access the petroleum reserves of more than a dozen African countries. That’s not to mention the airports, hospitals, and sports stadiums, or the nearly 200 government buildings.
This relationship has undoubtedly brought Africans some benefits, in the form of much-needed government revenues and basic infrastructure that would otherwise not exist. On the other hand, much of this development is designed for resource extraction rather than the needs of ordinary Africans. Much has been financed through exploitative debt arrangements, and much Chinese spending has merely lined the pockets of African politicians. China has stripped African forests for timber, ravaged African wildlife for traditional medicine, and supplied African governments with advanced tools for surveillance and repression.
In 2002, shortly before all of those manhole covers started to vanish, 1,000 Chinese workers arrived in Dortmund, a city in Germany’s Ruhr region. They had come to dismantle a large steelworks. Steel had been produced at the site since 1843, employing 10,000 workers at its peak. Now ThyssenKrupp, a German conglomerate, had agreed to sell the plant to the Chinese firm Shagang.
The enormous industrial edifice, complete with a seven-storey blast furnace, would be packed into crates and shipped 9,000 miles to Handan, a city on the Yangtze River north of Shanghai. It took the Chinese workforce less than a year, toiling 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with scant regard for health and safety precautions. Tens of thousands of parts were meticulously labelled and packed, down to individual screws, requiring some 50 container ships to move. The documents detailing the reassembly process alone weighed 40 tonnes.
Shagang’s steelworks in Handan — which also incorporated equipment from France and Luxembourg — is now the largest in the world. It has helped China’s steel output to surpass that of every other country combined. Back in Dortmund, the site of the former plant is unrecognisable. It has been redeveloped into the Phoenix-See, an artificial lake offering water sports, surrounded by restaurants and ranks of pristine white villas in the International Style. This post-industrial idyll has not, of course, managed to fill the void left by the city’s coal and steel sectors, which employed more than 75,000 people in 1960. When the journalist James Kynge visited Dortmund after the departure of the steel plant, he found widespread unemployment and social disintegration. “Do we look like yachtsmen to you?” a jobless steel worker asked. A local Lutheran priest had a starker message: “Our identity is lost.”
The implications of this story are not exactly what we might expect. Since 2015, when Trump first ran for the presidency, we have become familiar with his account of the “China shock”, or the impact of Chinese growth on manufacturing in the West. According to Trump, China had stolen American blue-collar jobs and grown rich selling America goods that should have been made there. Trump’s trade war against China during his first term was the opening salvo of the radical tariff programme we are seeing today. This view of China’s rise has not gained the same political traction in Europe, but it has become a kind of conventional wisdom. It is because China makes everything, we assume, that areas like the Ruhr or northern England no longer do.
But Western de-industrialisation is a much longer story. It was well underway before the China shock arrived, thanks to competition from countries like South Korean and Japan, and it is still going on today. Those Chinese workers who came to Dortmund were dismantling the last vestiges of unprofitable industries which had been closing down for decades. Germany had already shifted to sectors like cars, machinery, and chemicals, where China was not initially a competitor.
The impact was greater in the US, where according to one commonly cited estimate, the China shock cost a million manufacturing jobs, and 2.4 million jobs in total, during the first decade of the century. Still, what made Trump’s pitch so politically potent was not the number of lost livelihoods, but their concentration in Rust Belt states that helped him to win election in 2016. These areas were suffering from a manufacturing recession at the time, but one that was caused by the dollar’s appreciation against the Euro, not by China.
If we want to understand how the China supercycle has reshaped and undermined the political economy of Western countries, we should focus not just on the losers, but on the winners. Chinese growth offered significant benefits to the Western business and governing classes, and these benefits ultimately made them complacent. In Europe especially, elites became tacitly reliant on China to help them avoid difficult choices. They did not want to acknowledge that their advantages were only temporary, and that they were storing up problems in the longer term.
China rose in a global trading system dominated by America, and American big business reaped the rewards. Multinationals like Apple and Walmart benefitted from Chinese manufacturing, which was not only cheap but highly skilled and innovative, allowing them to develop new products and sell them around the world. In 2018, Forbes suggested that an iPhone would cost “in the $30,000 to $100,000 range” if Apple had to make it in the US, which may be an exaggeration but gets the point across. Likewise, business and financial interests poured capital into China to take advantage of the country’s growing market.
The wealth generated by this system incentivised the belief that, somehow, Chinese growth would not pose a major threat to America’s own power. This was despite clear evidence in the 2010s that China was rapidly scaling the technological ladder, while leveraging its own advantages in resources, production, and trade to secure a controlling position in the global economy. Since 2016, US politics has been overshadowed by these misjudgements, with both parties competing to appease the working class and trying to slow China’s advance.
A similar story can be told about Germany. The German car industry, which has played such an outsized role in European politics over the years, was another winner in China. The big three German carmakers — BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen — together accounted for a quarter of the Chinese market in 2019. But they failed to anticipate that China would rapidly develop its own world-beating automotive industry, focused on EVs and software. In fact, in this and other important areas, China has now become a direct competitor. And Germany is ill-prepared for this challenge, since its earlier successes disguised an irresponsible political consensus that, in the name of fiscal restraint, has starved the country of much-needed investment.
Even Europe’s moral aspirations look like a complacent fantasy when China’s role is taken into account. European politicians claim to lead the world in two areas: ensuring the welfare of their citizens, and protecting the environment. But in 2007, when the New York Times ran a report on the aftermath of the Dortmund steel transfer, it could already see that this model of virtuous prosperity was “illusory”. Europe’s clean air, the authors noted, was only possible because Chinese cities like Handan had become a nightmarish “miasma of dust and smoke”, poisoning their residents and driving up global CO2 emissions. Chinese steel mills produced three times more carbon dioxide than German ones, and did so in part to supply Europeans with cheap goods. As an economist at China’s Ministry for Commerce admitted, “the shortfall of environmental protection is one of the main reasons why our exports are cheaper.”
In other words, Europe built its green ambitions on the back of China’s rise as the biggest polluter in history. Britain is especially guilty here. UK governments have boasted about cutting the country’s emissions by about 40% since 1990, but when imported products are taken into account, the figure falls to 23%. Last October, to great fanfare, Britain marked the first day of coal-free electricity in its history. Yet this is basically irrelevant when global coal consumption, led by China, continues to reach new highs every year. Even the transition to renewable energy is being largely driven by coal. Everything from solar panels and electric vehicles to the metals used by green technologies are produced cheaply in China thanks to coal energy.
The solar panels now carpeting the English countryside also rely on the forced labour of Uyghur Muslims in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, where much of the world’s polysilicon is mined and processed. Meanwhile, China’s fishing fleets plunder the world’s oceans and its petrochemical factories pump out plastics for Shein garments, all to the benefit of European consumers.
Since January, the instability rippling across the world has been seen, understandably, as a result of the revolution taking place in the United States. The Trump administration has undermined old alliances and appeased old enemies, extorted trading partners and nakedly coveted the resources of other nations. Now it is trying to fashion a new economic order with the bluntest tools it can find. But even if America is responsible for the dramatic shape and pace of events, we should not lose sight of the dynamics operating in the background, dynamics unleashed by the supercycle.
The US has been trying to pivot its military forces away from Europe and towards Asia since the days of Barack Obama. The disregard in Trump’s circle for Ukraine and Nato is a more extreme expression of the same logic, which is ultimately dictated by the need to contain Chinese power. And recall that Joe Biden prosecuted his own trade war against China, raising tariffs on steel, aluminium, solar cells and EVs — the latter tariff was 100% — and tried to limit Chinese access to advanced computer chips. The Biden administration also coordinated Western investments in African railways and other infrastructure, as part of an effort to counter Chinese control of natural resources on the continent.
Likewise, Europe’s frantic efforts to regain a measure of autonomy are not only a response to Trump’s betrayal, but a belated attempt to gird the continent against Chinese economic might. The enormous investment packages recently passed by Germany’s parliament, reversing two decades of fiscal policy, are aimed at strengthening German industry as well as building defence capacity. European governments and the EU itself are reassessing environmental schemes that threaten security and economic competitiveness. Regulations on combustion cars are being relaxed, while carbon tax exemptions and the recent “clean industrial deal” actually protect polluting industries. If Europe wants to defend itself, then carbon-intensive sectors like steel may need to be subsidised after all.
Even the incipient sense of anarchy in the world is not entirely Trump’s doing. In recent decades, stability came not only from American supremacy, but from the structure of the supercycle, which anchored the world’s supply chains in China. But raw materials traders have long been gearing up for the next supercycle, which is now commencing. This one will be driven by the minerals used in renewable technologies and advanced computing. And rather than the stabilising framework of American-Chinese cooperation, it will take the form of a competitive scramble for resources. Numerous countries will want access to lithium, cobalt, and nickel for batteries, copper for transmitting electricity, platinum for electronic components, and a host of exotic rare earths — gallium, palladium, neodymium and more — for the hardware that underpins artificial intelligence. They will also want oil for the tonnes of plastic that go into every wind turbine and electric vehicle.
The problem for Western countries is that, thanks to the last supercycle, China has a massive head start in this race. It controls two-thirds of all lithium and cobalt processing, almost 70% of rare earths, and around 80% of battery production. Nor is this only a material question. Western commentators sometimes imagine that industrial capacity can simply be summoned into being by relaxing planning laws and providing financial incentives. But advanced manufacturing requires deep pools of experience and skill, which China has developed over time and the West, in many areas, has not. As Apple CEO Tim Cook put it a few years ago, “in the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.”
Look at Europe’s struggle to make batteries. Last year, around two decades after those workers came to Dortmund to dismantle the steel plant, another Chinese contingent was in the Swedish town of Skellefteå. This time they had come as experts, installing machinery for Northvolt, a beleaguered company that was being billed as Europe’s battery champion. As one engineer told the Financial Times, referring to China’s skill base, “they are established and they have already done it. So they’re just better. We are late to the party.” Northvolt went bust in March. China may not have cracked advanced semiconductors, but neither has America. In Arizona, efforts to kick-start an industry with Taiwanese assistance have been bogged down by a shortage of skilled workers.
Insofar as there is a consistent logic in Trump’s economic plans, it appears that he wants the US to be more like China — to have more heavy industry, more manufacturing jobs, more exports, and more self-reliance. Yet his tariffs are a self-destructive way to pursue these goals. They have already caused American manufacturing to seize up, because it relies on the very materials that Trump is making more expensive to import. As Michael Strain has pointed out, for every job making steel in the country, there are 80 jobs that use steel to make something else. And bringing back factories back to the US is not the same as bringing back jobs, since companies will seek to avoid the higher wage costs through automation.
If the China supercycle taught us anything, it is that the ability to make things depends on raw materials and supply chains far beyond a country’s borders. For all its industrial power, China too is vulnerable in this sense, and that is why it has invested so much effort in building up global networks through its Belt and Road Initiative. Trump, by contrast, prefers threats of conquest and the erratic theatre of the “deal”. To compete in the next supercycle, America will need leaders with a more subtle sense of how to run an empire.
Wessie du Toit writes about culture, design and ideas. His Substack is The Pathos of Things.
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SubscribeAncient wisdom the world has known for millennia: you get happy in the short term by doing what you want, but you get happy in the long term by doing what you should. And yet due to the foibles, failures and foolishness of mankind, we are constantly blinded to this truth, and so choose long term misery over long term happiness over and over again.
The compromise, self-sacrifice and negotiation inherent in marriage is the secret sauce of family life — and the true definition of Love. It is precisely because your wife or baby demands so much from you, that ultimately the relationship can yield the greatest happiness for you.
Humans are simply too blinkered by their passions and self-interest to remember this when making decisions day to day. And hence we need external guides — from the law, the church, friends, media, etc — to keep us on the path of happiness.
This would all have been so blindingly obvious to everyone until just a few decades ago, when we got too smart for our own good and put our personal desires at the center of our worldviews — a Copernican revolution that has yielded decades of misery cloaked in the false promises of personal authenticity and freedom.
A few days ago a young man said to be ‘ I really long for companionship, friendship and someone to be with in everyday life’. When I suggested that it sounds like he’s looking for a wife he replied ‘oh no- I’m really not ready for that!!’
I work with young people who are jaded by the broken relationships of their parents that they can only see a bleak future of work and taxes. The blind selfishness that has led to this has a lot to answer for. My happiest days aren’t spent travelling or working, they are spent in the company of my husband and we increased that happiness when we expanded our family unit.
I work with young people who are jaded by the broken relationships of their parents that they can only see a bleak future of work and taxes. The blind selfishness that has led to this has a lot to answer for. My happiest days aren’t spent travelling or working, they are spent in the company of my husband and we increased that happiness when we expanded our family unit.
Exactly – we need to practice Courage, Temperance, acting justly and Prudence (maybe faith hope and charity) to feel happiness – the Greeks noticed this a while ago, and the moral virtues have continued to be true throughout the ages.
self sacrifice, negotiation, love, all such virtues can be wiped out by a spouse who unilaterally decides to end it. When I asked my divorce lawyer how to apply our marriage vows, his answer was “those don’t count, legally”.
Rare is the wife who abandons a husband who places her interests above his own. But I’m sure it does happen now and then. (PS. I’m divorced myself.)
Rare is the wife who abandons a husband who places her interests above his own. But I’m sure it does happen now and then. (PS. I’m divorced myself.)
A few days ago a young man said to be ‘ I really long for companionship, friendship and someone to be with in everyday life’. When I suggested that it sounds like he’s looking for a wife he replied ‘oh no- I’m really not ready for that!!’
Exactly – we need to practice Courage, Temperance, acting justly and Prudence (maybe faith hope and charity) to feel happiness – the Greeks noticed this a while ago, and the moral virtues have continued to be true throughout the ages.
self sacrifice, negotiation, love, all such virtues can be wiped out by a spouse who unilaterally decides to end it. When I asked my divorce lawyer how to apply our marriage vows, his answer was “those don’t count, legally”.
Ancient wisdom the world has known for millennia: you get happy in the short term by doing what you want, but you get happy in the long term by doing what you should. And yet due to the foibles, failures and foolishness of mankind, we are constantly blinded to this truth, and so choose long term misery over long term happiness over and over again.
The compromise, self-sacrifice and negotiation inherent in marriage is the secret sauce of family life — and the true definition of Love. It is precisely because your wife or baby demands so much from you, that ultimately the relationship can yield the greatest happiness for you.
Humans are simply too blinkered by their passions and self-interest to remember this when making decisions day to day. And hence we need external guides — from the law, the church, friends, media, etc — to keep us on the path of happiness.
This would all have been so blindingly obvious to everyone until just a few decades ago, when we got too smart for our own good and put our personal desires at the center of our worldviews — a Copernican revolution that has yielded decades of misery cloaked in the false promises of personal authenticity and freedom.
To get married you need to find someone worth marrying, and who thinks you are worth marrying too. And someone who is likely to stay the course through thick and thin, especially if you are not well off. Such people may have become harder to find.
Nope – there’s loads of them out there.
Nope – there’s loads of them out there.
To get married you need to find someone worth marrying, and who thinks you are worth marrying too. And someone who is likely to stay the course through thick and thin, especially if you are not well off. Such people may have become harder to find.
According to the US census website, the decline of marriage rates is particularly marked for Black women.
‘ This should not be dependent on where they sit across the class divide. ‘
As always, when class is discussed in America , the problem is usually race.
Just as when race is discussed in America, the problem is usually class.
According to the US census website, the decline of marriage rates is particularly marked for Black women.
‘ This should not be dependent on where they sit across the class divide. ‘
As always, when class is discussed in America , the problem is usually race.
Just as when race is discussed in America, the problem is usually class.
It may also have something to do with religion. Religious people tend to marry more than nonreligious ones.
I was thinking along similar lines…sort of an analogy to “healthy vaccine bias”. Are there specific traits that are more common among those who actually get married (aot living together or being single)? Might the type of people who marry be more likely to be religious, conservative, responsible, community-minded, etc — which would skew the happiness data? I suspect so.
People who put higher priority on their social statues also tend to marry repeatedly. Many ambitious politicians follow this pattern.
People who put higher priority on their social statues also tend to marry repeatedly. Many ambitious politicians follow this pattern.
I was thinking along similar lines…sort of an analogy to “healthy vaccine bias”. Are there specific traits that are more common among those who actually get married (aot living together or being single)? Might the type of people who marry be more likely to be religious, conservative, responsible, community-minded, etc — which would skew the happiness data? I suspect so.
It may also have something to do with religion. Religious people tend to marry more than nonreligious ones.
Well…yes & no.
Prof. Peltzman, the author of the UC Study, which takes as its foundation the data generated from the biennial GSS Happiness Survey, makes what would seem to be an entirely egregious assumption about the survey results he’s seeking to analyze.
In order to understand the mistake, however, we must first begin with the central survey question itself, which asks: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Clearly this tilts all answers towards the ‘Happy’ side, given that no one can answer, “I am UNhappy”.
Intuitively, though, this does seem to make sense. It seems reasonable to believe that most people feel generally ‘happy’…especially as they compare themselves and their life condition to others….especially given a maturity which recognizes that ‘life is hard’…and attitude is key. Thus, yes, it would be entirely appropriate to believe that the average adult, asked the happiness question would indeed recognize that, as long as their life is not haunted by something entirely terrible at the present moment (terminal disease, the loss of a child or a spouse, etc.) then they are either ‘very happy’ or ‘pretty happy’. Why not?
But Prof. Peltzman, instead, “rescaled” the survey answers. He gave ‘100’ to ‘Very Happy’ and recategorized those responses as ‘Happy’. He assigned a -100 value to ‘Not Too Happy’ and recategorized those responses as “Sad”…and he, rather bizarrely, recategorized “Pretty Happy” as “Neither” and gave those responses a zero. In other words he reduced & shifted the entire scale to attempt to remove (though this reason is not made explicit) the ‘Happiness Tilt’. In effect he reconfigured the survey data to look more like a two party election. As he himself says in the survey, the 50% who chose ‘pretty happy’ became “non-voters in (his) two-way contest”.
But it’s not a two-way contest. And to say one is either ‘very happy’ or ‘pretty happy’ is indeed to say one is happy. This casual discard of 50% of all respondents seems entirely irresponsible. And the resulting conclusions, that much more dubious.
Certain significant data trends would still hold true, of course, but their magnitude would be potentially, seriously distorted.
So yes, being married is strongly correlated with those who say they are ‘very happy’. (And It would be interesting to see the correlation between ‘pretty happy’ and ‘married’ but the professor has placed that outside his study…so we can only guess) But he himself notes that this correlation is not necessarily causation, asking “Is that (correlation) because marriage produces happiness or because unhappy people tend to be difficult to live with or because they sort out of the marriage market and on and on or all of the above.”
We don’t know. He doesn’t either. So perhaps it is premature to recommend, as the authors do, that “we need to renew marriage and familial ties, especially in poor and working-class communities where the fabric of family life is weakest.”
Indeed, Peltzman’s analysis does tend to confirm that lower incomes do correlate with lower ‘very happy’ ratings…but even that is haunted by Easterlin’s Paradox which notes the correlation between Happiness & Income at a fixed time point, but highlights that it is not maintained over multiple points. (The distinction between income and wealth is probably also critical)
His analysis also notes the positive correlation between ideological conservatism (self-identified) and happiness…mirrored, of course, by a similar correlation between ‘liberalism’ and ‘sadness’. We see similar patterns when we look at college education & happiness (going up) and less than a HS education and ‘sadness’….and race & happiness (White Up / Black down…though the difference is narrowing)
But again, which is egg and which is chicken?
Should we advise people to become Married, Older, White Conservatives with college degrees because that will make them happy? Or are we simply observing that those who are satisfied with the life they’ve built tend to be married, older, educated, White conservatives?
Again, these correlations seem at least superficially reasonable…but even they are haunted by similar correlations that would equally seem reasonable… but are contradictory, an unmentioned. We might guess, as a for instance, that lower income/blue collar individuals tend more conservative..thereby raising their happiness quotient if the relationship is causal. Their lack of a college degree, however, might send it the other direction. On the other hand, a college degree in Gender Studies which enables only a job as a Starbucks Barista might equally send the happiness rating the wrong way as incomes drop.
If we assume, reasonably so, that family relationships encourage happiness …and family is a function of marriage…then we can understand marriage being correlated with happiness. But equally we might assume that larger family size is more associated with lower income rates which is more correlated with ‘sadness’.
We also recognize that the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the Black community runs at about 70%…and that poverty is strongly correlated with single-parent households….and that violent crime is strongly associated with Black communities (with a murder rate almost 10X the White murder rate). So which again is the chicken and which the egg? Clearly the struggles of an unwed mother, living on public assistance programs, in a neighborhood with an insane murder rate would tend to generate “sad” survey responses.
In the end we arrive back where we started, unenlightened by 50 years of survey data, but convinced that — in general — those qualities that we believe to be morally good… love, marriage, family, two-parent households, steady jobs, and a general maturity…. build good and happy lives. Is anyone surprised?
Great comment. It points up that the term “science”, when used in the compound “social science”, is often a mere courtesy title, like giving an honorary university doctorate a popular figure.
Exactly. Even allowing for the distortion you highlight, there is apparently a correlation. But what evidence of*causation*?
I take your points re data analysis — always good to look into those details for a better sense of what is or is not actually being measured.
But the note re “Is anyone surprised?” is that, yes, many people (young women in particular) assume that raising children in a “traditional” family will ruin their lives. See the recent Tik Toc video of a young woman who mocks such a life, with millions of hits (https://www.tiktok.com/@nunca3627x/video/7233138818809924870)?
That’s why it IS surprising. Many men and women are being told kids only ruin your life, marriage is a capstone not a foundation for life, etc. etc.
As a woman who has kids and works outside the home (and loves that): The scripts being offered men and women these days do not correlate to the data noted here. Sociologists can only offer the data and help us see the water we swim in.
A cautionary note: I have a liberal arts degree; I do not happen to be a barista but nothin’ wrong with that BTW despite the dig at working class folks in your post (which seemed unnecessary to your good points).
Great comment. It points up that the term “science”, when used in the compound “social science”, is often a mere courtesy title, like giving an honorary university doctorate a popular figure.
Exactly. Even allowing for the distortion you highlight, there is apparently a correlation. But what evidence of*causation*?
I take your points re data analysis — always good to look into those details for a better sense of what is or is not actually being measured.
But the note re “Is anyone surprised?” is that, yes, many people (young women in particular) assume that raising children in a “traditional” family will ruin their lives. See the recent Tik Toc video of a young woman who mocks such a life, with millions of hits (https://www.tiktok.com/@nunca3627x/video/7233138818809924870)?
That’s why it IS surprising. Many men and women are being told kids only ruin your life, marriage is a capstone not a foundation for life, etc. etc.
As a woman who has kids and works outside the home (and loves that): The scripts being offered men and women these days do not correlate to the data noted here. Sociologists can only offer the data and help us see the water we swim in.
A cautionary note: I have a liberal arts degree; I do not happen to be a barista but nothin’ wrong with that BTW despite the dig at working class folks in your post (which seemed unnecessary to your good points).
Well…yes & no.
Prof. Peltzman, the author of the UC Study, which takes as its foundation the data generated from the biennial GSS Happiness Survey, makes what would seem to be an entirely egregious assumption about the survey results he’s seeking to analyze.
In order to understand the mistake, however, we must first begin with the central survey question itself, which asks: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Clearly this tilts all answers towards the ‘Happy’ side, given that no one can answer, “I am UNhappy”.
Intuitively, though, this does seem to make sense. It seems reasonable to believe that most people feel generally ‘happy’…especially as they compare themselves and their life condition to others….especially given a maturity which recognizes that ‘life is hard’…and attitude is key. Thus, yes, it would be entirely appropriate to believe that the average adult, asked the happiness question would indeed recognize that, as long as their life is not haunted by something entirely terrible at the present moment (terminal disease, the loss of a child or a spouse, etc.) then they are either ‘very happy’ or ‘pretty happy’. Why not?
But Prof. Peltzman, instead, “rescaled” the survey answers. He gave ‘100’ to ‘Very Happy’ and recategorized those responses as ‘Happy’. He assigned a -100 value to ‘Not Too Happy’ and recategorized those responses as “Sad”…and he, rather bizarrely, recategorized “Pretty Happy” as “Neither” and gave those responses a zero. In other words he reduced & shifted the entire scale to attempt to remove (though this reason is not made explicit) the ‘Happiness Tilt’. In effect he reconfigured the survey data to look more like a two party election. As he himself says in the survey, the 50% who chose ‘pretty happy’ became “non-voters in (his) two-way contest”.
But it’s not a two-way contest. And to say one is either ‘very happy’ or ‘pretty happy’ is indeed to say one is happy. This casual discard of 50% of all respondents seems entirely irresponsible. And the resulting conclusions, that much more dubious.
Certain significant data trends would still hold true, of course, but their magnitude would be potentially, seriously distorted.
So yes, being married is strongly correlated with those who say they are ‘very happy’. (And It would be interesting to see the correlation between ‘pretty happy’ and ‘married’ but the professor has placed that outside his study…so we can only guess) But he himself notes that this correlation is not necessarily causation, asking “Is that (correlation) because marriage produces happiness or because unhappy people tend to be difficult to live with or because they sort out of the marriage market and on and on or all of the above.”
We don’t know. He doesn’t either. So perhaps it is premature to recommend, as the authors do, that “we need to renew marriage and familial ties, especially in poor and working-class communities where the fabric of family life is weakest.”
Indeed, Peltzman’s analysis does tend to confirm that lower incomes do correlate with lower ‘very happy’ ratings…but even that is haunted by Easterlin’s Paradox which notes the correlation between Happiness & Income at a fixed time point, but highlights that it is not maintained over multiple points. (The distinction between income and wealth is probably also critical)
His analysis also notes the positive correlation between ideological conservatism (self-identified) and happiness…mirrored, of course, by a similar correlation between ‘liberalism’ and ‘sadness’. We see similar patterns when we look at college education & happiness (going up) and less than a HS education and ‘sadness’….and race & happiness (White Up / Black down…though the difference is narrowing)
But again, which is egg and which is chicken?
Should we advise people to become Married, Older, White Conservatives with college degrees because that will make them happy? Or are we simply observing that those who are satisfied with the life they’ve built tend to be married, older, educated, White conservatives?
Again, these correlations seem at least superficially reasonable…but even they are haunted by similar correlations that would equally seem reasonable… but are contradictory, an unmentioned. We might guess, as a for instance, that lower income/blue collar individuals tend more conservative..thereby raising their happiness quotient if the relationship is causal. Their lack of a college degree, however, might send it the other direction. On the other hand, a college degree in Gender Studies which enables only a job as a Starbucks Barista might equally send the happiness rating the wrong way as incomes drop.
If we assume, reasonably so, that family relationships encourage happiness …and family is a function of marriage…then we can understand marriage being correlated with happiness. But equally we might assume that larger family size is more associated with lower income rates which is more correlated with ‘sadness’.
We also recognize that the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the Black community runs at about 70%…and that poverty is strongly correlated with single-parent households….and that violent crime is strongly associated with Black communities (with a murder rate almost 10X the White murder rate). So which again is the chicken and which the egg? Clearly the struggles of an unwed mother, living on public assistance programs, in a neighborhood with an insane murder rate would tend to generate “sad” survey responses.
In the end we arrive back where we started, unenlightened by 50 years of survey data, but convinced that — in general — those qualities that we believe to be morally good… love, marriage, family, two-parent households, steady jobs, and a general maturity…. build good and happy lives. Is anyone surprised?
When you think about it, that’s not really surprising. Most of the people in those categories have been through trauma, and a significant proportion of the “never having married” won’t be single by choice. That’s probably a source of unhappiness to them. For a large number of the divorced and separated this will not have been their choice. Another source of despondency.
Also a large number of those happily married are heading for a crash. The divorce rate is high. So they are only happy for now.
So people in marriages heading for divorce report themselves happy? That doesn’t make sense.
I’m assuming they are not unhappy from day one.
In my experience, one spouse was happy, one unhappy.
I’m assuming they are not unhappy from day one.
In my experience, one spouse was happy, one unhappy.
So people in marriages heading for divorce report themselves happy? That doesn’t make sense.
When you think about it, that’s not really surprising. Most of the people in those categories have been through trauma, and a significant proportion of the “never having married” won’t be single by choice. That’s probably a source of unhappiness to them. For a large number of the divorced and separated this will not have been their choice. Another source of despondency.
Also a large number of those happily married are heading for a crash. The divorce rate is high. So they are only happy for now.
which is why woke is a war on joy
Very true
Very true
which is why woke is a war on joy
Not to be all logical and everything, but all the study actually shows is that people who will claim to be happy are also more likely to be married. That’s correlation, not causation. Could be a sunk cost fallacy. They invested so much with one person saying they’re unhappy would force them to acknowledge to themselves how much they’ve wasted. And it’s not at all certain that those who claim to be happy are actually any happier that those who are not. It’s like saying whether you’re attractive. It’s possible they are, but it’s also possible they are not. There’s no real objective measure.
Not to be all logical and everything, but all the study actually shows is that people who will claim to be happy are also more likely to be married. That’s correlation, not causation. Could be a sunk cost fallacy. They invested so much with one person saying they’re unhappy would force them to acknowledge to themselves how much they’ve wasted. And it’s not at all certain that those who claim to be happy are actually any happier that those who are not. It’s like saying whether you’re attractive. It’s possible they are, but it’s also possible they are not. There’s no real objective measure.
The government should not discourage marriage, but it seems to me that many of its programs to alleviate poverty or the costs of unwed motherhood take the place of the family and discourage marriage. Years ago, families discouraged promiscuity, illegitimacy and profligacy, and acted as something of a safety net for their own children. Were there costs to this? Yes. Did it work perfectly? No. But did it work better than what we have? The answer seems obvious.
The government should not discourage marriage, but it seems to me that many of its programs to alleviate poverty or the costs of unwed motherhood take the place of the family and discourage marriage. Years ago, families discouraged promiscuity, illegitimacy and profligacy, and acted as something of a safety net for their own children. Were there costs to this? Yes. Did it work perfectly? No. But did it work better than what we have? The answer seems obvious.
Does it that marriage is the cause of people’s happiness, or that those who are happier are more likely to get married?
I’d wager that those who get married are more likely to be more financially secure than those that aren’t (better jobs, own their own home, kids etc) which may be as much a cause of their happiness than marriage itself.
A young couple living hand to mouth in a grotty overpriced rental are more likely to be unhappy than their financially secure counterparts, and in a precarious financial situation a wedding and children are much more likely to be pushed further into the future when they’re hopefully more financially stable (at which point they’ll probably be happier)
Does it that marriage is the cause of people’s happiness, or that those who are happier are more likely to get married?
I’d wager that those who get married are more likely to be more financially secure than those that aren’t (better jobs, own their own home, kids etc) which may be as much a cause of their happiness than marriage itself.
A young couple living hand to mouth in a grotty overpriced rental are more likely to be unhappy than their financially secure counterparts, and in a precarious financial situation a wedding and children are much more likely to be pushed further into the future when they’re hopefully more financially stable (at which point they’ll probably be happier)
This argument was already made in great detail in Coming Apart by Charles Murray.
This argument was already made in great detail in Coming Apart by Charles Murray.
Marriage is irrational. While it may initially seem a good idea to spend your life with one person, the high probability is that you will both change. I suggest defined-term agreements, with defined exit arrangements.
You’re entirely wrong.
Marriage is a commitment, and a very rational one at that. It’s endlessly being led around by your genitals which is irrrational.
Marriage is about duty and doing the right thing.
Marriage – whether secular or religious – exists primarily because of the transience of infatuation. You know how you can be mad into someone at the start, 24×7 shagathons etc. Pure hormones, we’re designed that way, but that never lasts more than say 6 months to a couple of years, max.
When you’re in the hormone-rush stage, marriage is superfluous, as your hormones are impelling you towards exclusivity with the person you’re obsessed with banging.
Any weak fool can be “committed” to someone they’re physically and emotionally obsessed with, during the infatuation phase. But that’s not commitment, and there is no point to marriage in that scenario.
Marriage doesn’t add anything, as you’re already super-obsessed, without having to try. But people like e.g., Adele see marriage as just a big day out, a public celebration of their current infatuation, some photos in Hello magazine etc, but certainly nothing more than that. Adele’s vows, if she made any, are entirely hollow.
People like Adele, and you, are observers at their own life. Their “commitment” is always entirely conditional on what they may or may not feel, next week, or tomorrow. As soon as they feel a pang of lust for another person, that’s it, they’re off again, dusting off their “exit arrangements”. Only encroaching middle age and decreasing physical attractiveness slows them down, but then they always feel trapped and miserable. Essentially they want to stay 24 forever, and have endless short-term flings, with super-duper knee-trembler orgasms on tap.
Which is arrested-development idiocy, but hey knock yourself out if you want to live like you’re immortal, when in reality all our lives are fleeting.
But this whole edifice of navel-gazing nonsense is incompatible with assuming responsibility for the growth and development of new human beings, which is a major part of any marriage.
Don’t start that if you’re going to bail on it, like a godamned snivelling weakling.
You make a choice – am I ruled by my genitals, or not? And people like Adele are, essentially, ruled by their genitals. Their life is a permanent quest for the perfect orgasm. If you ever read Cosmo magazine, you can glean the mindset – about 50% of Cosmopolitan’s magazine’ articles are about finding the perfect orgasm. This arrested-development navel-gazing twaddle is presented as being “liberated”.
Marriage is a wise and pragmatic recognition of the biological fact that physical infatuations wane (or we’d get no work done) and settle down.
If you make the mistake of thinking that you should always follow your “feelings”, then, logically, you’d be looking to re-marry about once a year, for most of us.
Marriage is about prioritising other people, it’s about service, that’s the nature of love. Someone takes a chance on you, stick with them. Respect them. Care for them. Man up, woman up, and stop acting like a teenager.
Oh, and most kids who are brutalised / abused / murdered in their homes are the victims of a step mum or stepdad.
Every flipping time. Poor child abused and murdered in appalling circumstances. Always, always, it’s a stepdad or step mum.
But hey, that’s all right because the parent who initiated the divorce is once again having amazing knee-tremblers.
Stupid twats
You’re entirely wrong.
Marriage is a commitment, and a very rational one at that. It’s endlessly being led around by your genitals which is irrrational.
Marriage is about duty and doing the right thing.
Marriage – whether secular or religious – exists primarily because of the transience of infatuation. You know how you can be mad into someone at the start, 24×7 shagathons etc. Pure hormones, we’re designed that way, but that never lasts more than say 6 months to a couple of years, max.
When you’re in the hormone-rush stage, marriage is superfluous, as your hormones are impelling you towards exclusivity with the person you’re obsessed with banging.
Any weak fool can be “committed” to someone they’re physically and emotionally obsessed with, during the infatuation phase. But that’s not commitment, and there is no point to marriage in that scenario.
Marriage doesn’t add anything, as you’re already super-obsessed, without having to try. But people like e.g., Adele see marriage as just a big day out, a public celebration of their current infatuation, some photos in Hello magazine etc, but certainly nothing more than that. Adele’s vows, if she made any, are entirely hollow.
People like Adele, and you, are observers at their own life. Their “commitment” is always entirely conditional on what they may or may not feel, next week, or tomorrow. As soon as they feel a pang of lust for another person, that’s it, they’re off again, dusting off their “exit arrangements”. Only encroaching middle age and decreasing physical attractiveness slows them down, but then they always feel trapped and miserable. Essentially they want to stay 24 forever, and have endless short-term flings, with super-duper knee-trembler orgasms on tap.
Which is arrested-development idiocy, but hey knock yourself out if you want to live like you’re immortal, when in reality all our lives are fleeting.
But this whole edifice of navel-gazing nonsense is incompatible with assuming responsibility for the growth and development of new human beings, which is a major part of any marriage.
Don’t start that if you’re going to bail on it, like a godamned snivelling weakling.
You make a choice – am I ruled by my genitals, or not? And people like Adele are, essentially, ruled by their genitals. Their life is a permanent quest for the perfect orgasm. If you ever read Cosmo magazine, you can glean the mindset – about 50% of Cosmopolitan’s magazine’ articles are about finding the perfect orgasm. This arrested-development navel-gazing twaddle is presented as being “liberated”.
Marriage is a wise and pragmatic recognition of the biological fact that physical infatuations wane (or we’d get no work done) and settle down.
If you make the mistake of thinking that you should always follow your “feelings”, then, logically, you’d be looking to re-marry about once a year, for most of us.
Marriage is about prioritising other people, it’s about service, that’s the nature of love. Someone takes a chance on you, stick with them. Respect them. Care for them. Man up, woman up, and stop acting like a teenager.
Oh, and most kids who are brutalised / abused / murdered in their homes are the victims of a step mum or stepdad.
Every flipping time. Poor child abused and murdered in appalling circumstances. Always, always, it’s a stepdad or step mum.
But hey, that’s all right because the parent who initiated the divorce is once again having amazing knee-tremblers.
Stupid twats
Marriage is irrational. While it may initially seem a good idea to spend your life with one person, the high probability is that you will both change. I suggest defined-term agreements, with defined exit arrangements.
I don’t know if the US has the equivalent of ‘civil partnerships’ as in the UK, but if it does there’s no mention of them. Not doing so gives the appearance of a hidden agenda regarding marriage.
Comparing the happiness of those in long-term civil partnerships with those who’ve “tied the knot” might reveal a different outcome, but that might also spoil the agenda.
According to the footnote on page 11 of the paper linked in the article, the options for marital status on the General Society Survey are: married, widowed, divorced, separated and never married. These reflect the national marital status options and as far as I can tell have been unchanged since the General Society Survey was started in 1972.
I am not aware that civil unions, which exist at the state level and were mainly for gay people before the Supreme Court mangled the definition of marriage, are common in any case.
These are the likely explanations for why there is no option on the survey for some sort of “civil partnership”–rather than some obscure agenda.
A quick Google suggests that the European and Canadian “versions” of this study do indeed have an option for “civil partnership”.
That answers the question that prefaced my comment, thanks.
The potential agenda i was alluding to is an attempt to elevate marriage in its traditional sense by those of a religious disposition. It is, of course, entirely a societal construct which has served many different purposes in different societies, and nothing wrong with that: i’ve been married.
nope, it’s almost entirely biological. Overlaid on that is monogamy, enforced lately (for say 1500 years) by the church.
nope, it’s almost entirely biological. Overlaid on that is monogamy, enforced lately (for say 1500 years) by the church.
That answers the question that prefaced my comment, thanks.
The potential agenda i was alluding to is an attempt to elevate marriage in its traditional sense by those of a religious disposition. It is, of course, entirely a societal construct which has served many different purposes in different societies, and nothing wrong with that: i’ve been married.
According to the footnote on page 11 of the paper linked in the article, the options for marital status on the General Society Survey are: married, widowed, divorced, separated and never married. These reflect the national marital status options and as far as I can tell have been unchanged since the General Society Survey was started in 1972.
I am not aware that civil unions, which exist at the state level and were mainly for gay people before the Supreme Court mangled the definition of marriage, are common in any case.
These are the likely explanations for why there is no option on the survey for some sort of “civil partnership”–rather than some obscure agenda.
A quick Google suggests that the European and Canadian “versions” of this study do indeed have an option for “civil partnership”.
I don’t know if the US has the equivalent of ‘civil partnerships’ as in the UK, but if it does there’s no mention of them. Not doing so gives the appearance of a hidden agenda regarding marriage.
Comparing the happiness of those in long-term civil partnerships with those who’ve “tied the knot” might reveal a different outcome, but that might also spoil the agenda.