Pound Pup Legacy

There's an interesting article about a nation's state of happiness that says:

Scientists had thought happiness is stable over time when looking at entire societies. "Most previous research suggests that people and nations are stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill,'" Inglehart said. "The belief has been that no matter what happens or what we do, basic happiness levels are stable and don't really change."

So Inglehart's team was surprised that happiness "rose substantially." They speculate reasons for the sunny outlooks include societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.

Previous research has found that happiness is partly inherited and that money doesn't buy much of it.

Yet the new survey finds people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries. And controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others.

 

"The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives," Inglehart said.

A survey released last week found one reason America doesn't top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the "wrong track." The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question.

The World Values Surveys, led by Inglehart, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish and Netherlands Foreign Ministries, and other institutions. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25460793/?GT1=43001

"Freedom to choose" seems like an ironic twist to a nation's happiness, given the fact that so many children have been taken from families and sold through the private adoption industry services.  What' s interesting to me about this report is how it focuses on the Baby Boomer Generation, the folks who put Closed Adoption in sealed birth-record history, all because Pro Choice was seen as a killing mission by many religious organizations.  [For those who don't know, the Closed Era of Adoption was made rich through the lives of unmarried pregnant women and their unborn children.  The double-whammie "Goodness" adoption brought many families is simple:  by ridding a child through adoption, the shame of premartial or incestuous sex brought to Good Families could become secret, and by buying an infant through private services, the infertile secrets other families kept hidden could be removed because no longer did a couple have to have sex to have a family.]

Seems to me, no good comes from secrets and lies, but I was just a mere child when all these Adult Choices were made for me in the late 1960's....  

So... seventeen years of "happy research" later, aside from the countless of cases of corrupt Child Placement practices, and heinous acts made public through the publishing of an act  called "child trafficking", what have different countries learned for their social-selves?  Are women and children any safer or happier than they were a couple generations ago when abortion was seen as adoption's ugly dark sinister sister Right to Life-ers want to fix?  Or have we become a global community that thinks broken families are no big deal, and happiness can be found where the good salaries are?

I wonder what makes Denmark such a happy nation?  What do they have or do in terms of child-care and familiy-services that other countries aren't doing?