Health Status Linked to Happiness

Previously, studies link self-perceived happiness to the absence or presence (and the degree thereof) of having a medical condition.  Erik Angner, from George Mason University (Virginia, USA), and colleagues developed a direct measure of the degree to which disease disrupts daily functioning.  Their “freedom-from-debility score” is based on four health survey questions explicitly designed to represent limitations in physical activities and in usual role activities because of health problems. The researchers found that when controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors in addition to objective and subjective health status, a one-point increase in the freedom-from-debility score (on a scale from 0 to 100) was associated with a three-percent reduction in the odds of reported unhappiness. The study authors submit that: “health status is one of the most influential predictors of happiness, that the association between health status and happiness depends greatly on the manner in which health status is measured, and that the degree to which disease disrupts daily functioning is inversely associated with happiness.”