An American Life Satisfaction Survey
In 1965, Hadley Cantril developed an intuitive, stable, cross-cultural, and internationally valid method of measuring life satisfaction. In 2004, two of the largest figures in psychology pleaded for the world to finally start using this kind of measure to guide policy. In 2010, the president of a G7 country commissioned “Mis-measuring our lives,” a devastating critique of GDP as a national barometer, from an international working group led by multiple Nobel economists.
In 2024, the United State’s approaches to policy have failed so catastrophically that only 4% of polled Americans believe that the nation is “working very well.” And yet, the United States has never collected any data that will let us see what really does increase satisfaction.
However, the Dovecote Institute’s advocacy on this issue has begun to find supporters. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton has officially requested that the Census include questions on life satisfaction in the bi-annual American Community Survey, which would provide millions of publicly available data points, and completely transform the country’s ability to make human-driven policy.
