from university, for example, now compare themselves with other professionals, then again
happiness may not increase with educational attainment.
Michalos (2007) suggests that the relationship between education and happiness may depend in part
on how broadly education is defined. Defining education as formal education leading to some kind
of certification as opposed to the more general sense of the many ways in which learning occurs
may be a substantial oversimplification. While this is an important and valid point, it is the more
limited formal definition of education that is of interest here, since this paper seeks to explain the
relationship between happiness and the attainment of formal educational qualifications. With a selfconfessed
degree of exaggeration, Michalos (2007, p.4) proposes four scenarios which seem
instructive here:
real paradise—people’s living conditions are good and people accurately perceive them to be
good (presumably such people would report being happy)
real hell—people’s living conditions are bad and people accurately perceive them to be bad
(presumably such people would report being unhappy)
fool’s paradise—people’s living conditions are bad but people inaccurately perceive them to be
good (presumably such people would report being happy)
fool’s hell—people’s living conditions are good but people inaccurately perceive them to be bad
(presumably such people would report being unhappy).
If more-educated people are genuinely less happy, it may be that they are living in a ‘fool’s hell’ or
that less-educated people are living in a ‘fool’s paradise’. Even if there were such a causal negative
relationship with education, Michalos questions the inference that could be drawn from happiness
measures, from both a moral and policy perspective. He draws upon Socrates’s view of wellbeing as
meaning ‘living well and doing well’ to argue that there is more to life than being happy. In quoting
Mill (1863):
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. (Cited by Michalos 2007, p.6)
He puts the point rather bluntly, and the discussion here is in no way intended to imply those of
lower education are somehow less worthy. Rather, the argument is that education has an intrinsic
contribution to ‘living well and doing well’ which may promote critical thought or heightened
concern in some domains in life, and perhaps reduced ‘pleasures’ in other domains, but this should
not be taken as reduced wellbeing defined more widely. Micholas proposes his Multiple
Discrepancies Theory for interpreting wellbeing, whereby overall happiness and happiness in
individual life domains, such as marriage and family life, working life, social life, and health, are
interrelated and dependent upon perceived discrepancies between what one wants and what one
has, possibly conditioned upon what one has had in the past.
Overall, the theoretical links between education and wellbeing are not well developed. Some of the
limitations and complexities facing theorists and empirical analysts are discussed by Desjardins
(2008), including the problem that the objectives of education, or the dimensions of wellbeing that
should be enhanced by education, are not clear. Desjardins identifies three broad levels at which
education can be seen to impact upon wellbeing: through an absolute mechanism in which
education directly enhances individuals’ resources and capabilities to influence their own wellbeing;
through a relative mechanism where one’s level of education enhances their relative position and
influence in society; and through a cumulative mechanism in which rising levels of education have
positive externalities for society as a whole or for groups within society through, for example,
greater levels of trust, civil engagement and innovation. This concept of relative mechanisms has a
clear parallel to the effects of rivalry discussed above.
An important link between education and wellbeing identified by Desjardins is that of agency,
which has been identified by psychologists and sociologists as being important to wellbeing.
Education may influence both individual and collective agency. At an individual level agency refers