The Meaning of Life (Satisfaction): An interview with Engage Nova Scotia's Danny Graham and Taylor Hill
Engage Nova Scotia’s Culture and Communications Lead, Catherine Hart, sat down with CEO, Danny Graham, and Research and Data Lead, Taylor Hill, to dig into the concept of life satisfaction – an important measure in the academic field of quality of life studies and our own Nova Scotia Quality of Life Survey.
Here’s the conversation, edited slightly for clarity.
Catherine: What do you mean by life satisfaction? How is it defined, and is it just a fancy way of saying happiness – why or why not?
Taylor: I think differently about happiness than how people often talk about it.
To me, happiness is a fleeting emotion of joy, whereas life satisfaction is more enduring and related to someone’s overall wellbeing. I think of happiness and life satisfaction as two distinct things.
In the grand scheme of things, how are things going? (This is life satisfaction.) I think of happiness, not as a perception of how your life is going but more of how you feel in a specific moment. Life satisfaction is an overall, umbrella way to measure how things are going, and by design, it’s supposed to be a little general.
Danny: The words happy and happiness are thrown around in our world and society where it feels like it’s this fluctuating experience that someone has, that wavers. Life satisfaction is something that is more like saying to someone, “How are you?” but really meaning it – “No, really, how’s it really going for you?”
What’s happening in your life that you want to share that’s influencing how you’re feeling? Life satisfaction is richer and more profound, and it’s a question that’s being asked all around the globe. It’s a portal into insights about what’s going well and what might need improvement.
Catherine: How is that nuance that you’re talking about captured in a scale of 1-10?
How might someone who is responding to the question interpret the difference between satisfaction and happiness? Or even the difference between contentment and happiness. Can you expand on that?
Taylor: This is illustrating the “jargon” issue of any social sciences research. It’s hard to know exactly where one term starts and another ends.
I like the word content; it’s not one I use often, and I think it’s a good one. The reason the question says, “in general, overall, how is your life going,” is because it’s intended to prompt you to reflect on the nuances of your own life. There’s a reason we don’t say, “How happy are you?”
Danny: Every starting point is going to be imperfect. At some point, the question becomes, what is the meaning of your life, and are you living up to the true purpose of what your life is meant to be? At some point, it becomes entirely philosophical. The life satisfaction question is intended to get to, overall, something that gives us a barometer on whether things are generally in a good place or there are concerns.
It's a starting point for a larger field that begins to unpack the limitless number of issues that influence whether something is going well or not. In addition to all the growth measurements we have for the way that we see progress, what else is happening in our society and for individuals that we need to be paying attention to? And life satisfaction overall, in general, has been a really helpful tool.
People could give their answers based on a wide variety of considerations – from meeting basic needs to their sense of belonging – it points us to the starting point for people.
Catherine: So then, what makes life satisfaction a good measure of subjective wellbeing?
We’re asking “overall” and “in general,” and we can use other ways to dig into the nuance of any one person or group’s reasons for high or low life satisfaction, but it offers a direct starting point for that conversation or exploration.
Danny: The reason that life satisfaction has caught the attention of the United Nations (UN) and countries in the OECD is that it points to the many things that may be going well, or not.
So, what’s the story of someone’s life satisfaction by age, or by region, or by education background, or by housing circumstances. What do we need to be changing about those issues that will influence whether life is going well for people after that?
Taylor: Life satisfaction is the starting point from which you dig in, and deeper psychological measures can help us do that.
Catherine: Can you expand a little bit more on who is using this measurement, and how?
Danny: At a global level, the UN has spent considerable effort and annually produces a report that talks about happiness in countries around the world. The OECD (which Canada is a member of) also really pays attention to it.
In general, across the 200-250 countries that get measured, Canada consistently comes up as the top 10-15 countries in the world with their citizens being happy with life relative to others. Does that mean we’re generally doing well? Yes, but does it point specifically to the experience of people who are living in a tent or struggling with food insecurity weekly or lacking social connection? No.
What’s interesting about the NS Quality of Life Initiative is that we’ve created the largest single data set of its type around people’s life satisfaction and how things are going for people in Nova Scotia.
We’re able to understand that at a level deeper than any other jurisdiction globally because of the fantastic way that our tools are able to give us insights about Nova Scotia residents who are experiencing low and high life satisfaction.
Catherine: How did this question come to be? What other things should be looked at alongside it?
Taylor: The idea of life being worthwhile came from Aristotle, and life satisfaction came from Aristippusr; we’ve been talking about this forever. There’s a lot of wording you can use to ask people about their life satisfaction – my guess is that this specific question we’ve been asking people is 50-60 years old.
Danny: There is a big “what else” that should be considered.
What do we need to understand about the countries that are experiencing higher life satisfaction relative to other places? In measuring happiness globally, there are strong correlations between economic growth since the Second World War and life satisfaction. Increasingly, however, researchers taking a closer look at this trend are noting countries that spread the benefits of economic growth to a wider circle of society to ensure fewer residents are falling between the cracks, on average, have higher life satisfaction.
The Scandinavian countries (which generally show up at the top of life satisfaction measurements), 20-25 years ago, paid attention to everyone enjoying the benefits of economic growth. There’s also a lot of research looking at whether income beyond a certain point actually contributes to our happiness. This is related to the Easterlin Paradox – the idea that the incremental happiness benefit you get with higher income is very important to people with lower incomes and gradually becomes inconsequential for people with higher incomes. Money matters, but it matters most to those who are struggling to meet their basic needs.
Catherine: What was the most surprising finding from the 2019 NS Quality of Life Survey related to life satisfaction?
Taylor: It would be the importance of the environment. Of course, it’s important; I just didn’t know the degree to which it is important relative to everything else. I think it’s reassuring that it’s something you can hypothetically change at a neighbourhood level, in order to try to increase life satisfaction within communities.
The variables we see as strongly related to life satisfaction can be thought of, thematically, as place (like satisfaction with the natural environment where you live), people (like social connections), and perceptions (like time adequacy).
Danny: Things that wouldn’t surprise you are that people’s experiences of poverty and low mental health are correlated with low life satisfaction. What might surprise you as really critical issues are loneliness, having less time for others, a low sense of community, low self-assessed physical and mental health, and low satisfaction with the environment, which are all correlated with low trust in institutions.
There’s something in the nature of conversations we’re not having about our relationships with each other and our relationships with institutions. For people with low life satisfaction, those are key considerations.
Catherine: Can you say more about trust, low life satisfaction, and mental health and what we’re seeing?
Danny: Looking across the spectrum along that 10-point scale of life satisfaction, at people who are above and below the midline, the number one correlation that shows up is self-assessed mental health, followed by inadequate time for others, loneliness and social isolation, little time for your own wellbeing, and a low sense of belonging to others or community.
When you talk to a friend about what’s happening in society, we often default to topical problems in the news. It strikes me that too little attention is going to connecting those challenges to basic socio-psychological struggles that appear to be growing worse.
Pressing questions for our time are: Do you have a friend? Are you feeling lonely? Is there one person you can rely on if things really go south in your life? We’re just not unpacking their relevance in public discourse.
Catherine: We have such an innate need to belong that if we’re not finding it in good places, we’ll find it in dark places, as Kim Samuel says.
There’s a huge tie between having someone in your life you can count on and your trust in politicians, for example. If you feel like you belong in your community, you’re more likely to feel like the things in your community are for you.
What are your reflections on that?
Taylor: I think all of that is related. I think low sense of trust is one of those topics we haven’t dug into fully and there is more work that could be done there.
In terms of trust and confidence, recent developments in the literature talk about the role of public trust in science as a key indicator of how people are going to participate or take action on climate change.
Confidence in public institutions is linked to feeling like you are benefitting from public policy. Having trust in other people is more strongly linked to wellbeing than trust in institutions. Trust in others is “better for you” (in that, it is statistically linked to life satisfaction) than having trust in institutions, is one way to look at it.
Danny: At one time, we got our information from sources we trusted. Much of that trust was deserved – and some of it was not. Now, we consume information from a wider array of perspectives, agendas, and filters. This, I believe, has contributed to a splintering of trust in basic and foundational principles that held society together and contributed to our common good. That’s a big shift over just 50 years or so.
If more of us create comprehensive data sets about everyone’s experiences in society, and mine them effectively, we’ll be able to increasingly understand our interrelatedness and the complexities of ensuring a good life for everyone.
Catherine: So, it’s a very good thing we’ll be asking Nova Scotians how they’re doing once again with the 2024 NS Quality of Life Survey?
Danny: Yes, exactly.