E22 - Interview with Danny Blanchflower: Father of the Happiness Curve (Plus a Discussion of the Decline in Youth Happiness)

In this episode we are pleased to bring you our interview with David, aka Danny Blanchflower, who is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, adviser to the United Nations, and former external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. In our opening segment we review our previous discussions of the u-shaped life happiness curve, why we care about the happiness of our youth, and Professor Blanchflower's connection to the social science literature related to this topic (3:40-15:30). In our interview with Danny we discuss how he became interested in exploring trends in happiness as a labor economist, how happiness is measured in social science, the original observation of the u-shaped happiness curve in which well being dips in the midlife, data from his  new paper that reports on the observed increase in depression among young people across 34 different countries, and some of the ongoing debate about the possible link between this you epidemic in anxiety and depression and cell phone/internet usage (13:50-81:45). Finally, in our closing segment, Alvin and I briefly preview some of the discussion on the possible causes of the youth anxiety and depression that we will cover in more depth in our next episode (81:50-95:48). Email: [email protected]  Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023 Professor Blanchflower's latest paper on youth happiness: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32337 Professor Blanchflower's blog: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/blanchflower/category/econwalkingabout/ After Babel Substack article from Professor Blanchflower: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/youth-health-declines-82-countries Peter Gray paper on reduced independent activity and childhood happiness: https://www.petergray.org/_files/ugd/b4b4f9_f2cb98d004af4ebf9644c8daa30b040e.pdf