# Gatherer ancestry associated with national happiness

## TL;DR

This study finds that countries with more descendants from hunter-gatherer societies report higher happiness levels, even after accounting for economic factors.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel country-level measure of gatherer ancestry and links it to national happiness.

## Key findings

- Gatherer ancestry is significantly associated with higher happiness levels.
- The association remains robust after controlling for historical and contemporary factors.
- Results support the idea that pre-agricultural lifestyles may enhance emotional wellbeing.

## Abstract

Efforts to improve human emotional wellbeing through economic growth have seen varied success. One interpretation of the lack of wellbeing returns to economic growth is that humans may have been more emotionally suited to patterns of life in pre-agricultural societies. This study examines the hypothesis, dating to Rousseau, that descendants of hunter-gatherer societies have higher levels of subjective wellbeing. It utilizes data from 1265 small scale societies in the Murdock Ethnographic Atlas to construct a country-level measure of gatherer ancestry. Average country-level happiness and life satisfaction were derived from the World Values Survey which covered 104 countries from 1981–2014. Gatherer ancestry was significantly associated with happiness, controlling for contemporary income per capita (beta = 13.58; standard error = 3.0, R2 = 11.8%, p < 0.01). Results were robust to an extensive list of historical and contemporary controls. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that gatherer lifestyle organization may hold insights for human emotional wellbeing.