经济学人下载:国民幸福指数(1)

Do a country's inhabitants get happier as it gets richer?
一个国家变得更加富有了，他的国民就会越幸福吗？

Most governments seem to believe so, given their relentless focus on increasing GDP year by year.
大多数政府似乎都是这么认为的，因为他们一直致力于逐年提高GDP。

Reliable, long-term evidence linking wealth and happiness is, however, lacking.
但却缺乏将财富和幸福联系起来的可靠且长期的证据。

And measuring well-being is itself fraught with problems,
衡量福祉本身就充满了问题，

since it often relies on surveys that ask participants to assess their own levels of happiness subjectively.
因为这种衡量依赖于调查，这些调查要求参与者主观评估自己的幸福水平。

Daniel Sgroi of the University of Warwick and Eugenio Proto of the University of Glasgow,
但英国华威大学的丹尼尔·斯格罗以及格拉斯哥大学的尤金尼奥·普罗托

both in Britain, think, nevertheless, that they have an answer.
认为他们找到了答案。

By examining millions of books and newspaper articles published since 1820 in four countries (America, Britain, Germany and Italy),
他们研究了四个国家（美国、英国、德国和意大利）自1820年以来出版的书籍和报纸文章，

they have developed what they hope is an objective measure of each place's historical happiness.
他们开发出了一种客观的方法来衡量每个地方的历史幸福感。

And their answer is that wealth does bring happiness, but some other things bring more of it.
他们的答案是，财富确实能带来幸福，但其他一些东西能带来更多的幸福。

Previous research has shown that people's underlying levels of happiness are reflected in what they say or write.
先前的研究表明，人们潜在的幸福水平反映在他们所说或所写的东西上。

Dr Sgroi and Dr Proto therefore consulted newspaper archives and Google Books,
因此，斯格罗博士和普罗托博士查阅了报纸档案和谷歌图书，

a collection of more than 8m titles that constitute around 6% of all books physically published.
这些书籍报纸超过800万种，占实际出版物的6%。

They searched these texts for words that had been assigned a psychological "valence"—
他们在这些文本中搜索那些被赋予心理“效价”的词—

a value representing how emotionally positive or negative a word is—
这个值代表着一个词在情感上是积极的还是消极的—

while controlling for the changing meanings of words such as "gay" and "awful"
同时还控制着“gay”和“awful”等词词义的变化

(which once most commonly meant "to inspire awe").
（这些词曾经最常见的词义是“让人敬畏”）。

The result is the National Valence Index, published this week in Nature Human Behaviour.
该研究的结果就是本周发表在《Nature Human Behaviour》杂志上的《National Valence Index》。

Placed alongside the timeline of history, the valence indices for the places under study
沿着历史的时间轴，研究地区的效价指数

show how changes in national happiness reflect important events.
显示了国家幸福指数的变化是如何反映重要事件的。

In Britain, for example, happiness fell sharply during the two world wars.
例如，在两次世界大战期间，英国幸福感急剧下降。

It began to rise again after 1945, peaked in 1950, and then fell gradually,
其幸福感在1945年后再次上升，并在1950年达到顶点，然后又逐渐下降，

including through the so-called Swinging Sixties, until it reached a nadir around 1980.
包括所谓的摇摆的六十年代，直到1980年左右达到最低点。

America's national happiness, too, fell during the world wars.
美国的国民幸福指数在世界大战期间也下降了。

It also fell in the 1860s, during and after the country's civil war.
在19世纪60年代以及美国内战期间和之后，其国民幸福指数也下降了。