In his Oct. 11, 2007 New York Review of Books piece ("They'd Much
Rather Be Rich"), Andrew Hacker writes of Avner Offer's book, The
Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United
States and Britain Since 1950 (2007, Oxford University Press):
"I've been rich, and I've been poor," the cabaret entertainer
Sophie Tucker was once heard to say, famously adding, "and believe me,
rich is better." Avner Offer disagrees. In his view, the spread of
affluence not only corrupts character, but has caused al these
disorders and discontents:
family breakdown, addiction, stress, road and landscape congestion,
obesity, poverty, denial of health care, mental disorder, violence,
economic fraud, and insecurity.
He cites surveys in which today's Americans declare themselves
unhappier than their parents were. Young people who earlier heeded
their elders are now prone to "intoxicating short-term dissipation."
Offer argues that advertising, by flaunting what we don't have, is a
major cause of malaise. His book's most vivid examples come from the
research at Duke University's Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising,
and Marketing. Recurrent pitches, for example, have insidious effects:
"By saturating the public domain with false sincerity, advertising
makes genuine sincerity more difficult."
Moreover, he writes, "affluence breeds impatience," whereas more
modest degrees of wealth fostered "reciprocity and commitment." Modern
marriages are like products purchased at the mall: turn them in if
they don't work out. Using statistics from Nigeria and Lebanon, he
finds a link between low incomes and family bonds. But he can also get
the figures wrong, as when he writes that cohabiting couples have less
sex than their married counterparts. In fact, the study he cites found
the former to be considerably more active, which is what most of us
might expect.
While Offer doesn't define "affluence," his book focuses on how
rising income affects ordinary people. The average American family now
has two and a half times the purchasing power of its 1947
counterpart. Affluence for such a family isn't wealth; many have heavy
debts and are unprepared for calamities. But they frequent suburban
malls, crowd the nation's airports, and are helping their children
through college. Offer's statistics suggest that at least two thirds
of Americans are in this pool, whereas in 1947 only one in three
were.
Early in The Challenge of Affluence, a predictable thought
arises: weren't indigence and diseases common in pre-affluent periods?
Yet Offer, who is Oxford's Chichele Professor of Economic History,
says little about the past. In New York City, at the start of the last
century, one fifth of all babies died before reaching the age of
six. Tuberculosis was rampant in the tenements, and very often
fatal. Altogether, fewer than 2 percent of New Yorkers survived to
celebrate their seventieth birthday -- the kind of fact Offer fails to
consider. Yet on one count, Offer is correct: nuptials were taken
seriously. The 1910 Census found only 8,292 divorced men and women,
against the 1,805,335 who were married. Today's divorce ratio is forty
times higher.
Offer's chief concern isn't with the very rich who have always
lived lavishly. Rather, he focuses on how a half-century of abundance
in the United States has fomented a "self-regarding individualism" in
the new majority who now share in its largess. He concludes, contra
Sophie Tucker, that more money in more pockets hasn't increased the
gross domestic happiness, although he grants that better-paid men and
women exercise more and smoke less. [ . . . ]
Rising real incomes, Offer concludes, lead to "self-defeating
choices." His examples range from undersaving and gambling to obesity
and infidelity. He cites the less-affluent British, who show more
patience and restraint, owing to their "class barriers," which
restrain personal aspirations. His basic criticism of Americans is
that they have a greater sense of entitlement than their British
cousins do. In fact, those feelings -- coupled with a propensity for
purchasing -- have been around for a long time, including during the
less prosperous periods Offer cites. Alexander Hamilton urged citizens
to take a second job, "as a resource for multiplying their
acquisitions or their enjoyments." Somewhat later, Alexis de
Toqueville noted prosperity's untoward effects, especially in "that
strange melancholy which often haunts the inhabitants of democratic
countries in the midst of their abundance." Offer is convincing when
he argues that the emphasis on acquisition serves to accentuate the
poverty of the minorities left behind, whether in New York in 1900 or
more recently in New York in 1900 or more recently in New Orleans
following Hurricane Katrina. If American affluence goes back a long
way, it also remains the overriding reason why so many people want to
come here.
While psychology may be less methodical than economics, an analysis
of the urge to spend needs to delve into people's minds. I wish Offer
had tried to say more about motives. All this purchasing involves more
than keeping up with neighbors or impressing rivals we don't
like. Rather, Hamilton's "acquisitions and enjoyments" help us to
delineate who we are. Most of us, including philosophers and poets,
use what we wear or where we take vacations to express or confirm our
identities. But does this mean the richer we are, the more dimensions
of experience we discover? Offer would say no. But of course he can't
know about the inner lives of many citizens. Who can?
This doesn't quite inspire me to run out and buy a $45 hardcover
book, and not just because I'm still stuck in the mindset that we're
not really as affluent as people seem to think -- maybe something
due to habits my parents developed during the Great Depression and
WWII. The bigger problem is likely to be the confusion in the book,
but I'm still intrigued, because the relationship between affluence
and, for lack of a better word, happiness does seem to be fitful.
Moreover, it suggests further problems: if we're unable to convert
ascending affluence into happiness, how much worse is it going to
be when we bumps up against material limits?
Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and
Well-Being int he United States and Britain Since 1950 (2007,
Oxford University Press)