I listened to this LSE podcast - Happiness around the world by Prof Carol Graham and I asked her whether she had any data on whether (as some media scholars suggest) the increased exposure in poor countries to media depictions of life in rich countries had any effect on happiness (by making them feel impoverished by comparison. She replied:

I have data on internet and media access for Latin America, and there I find that those with internet access are typically happier than the average, but this correlates with an overall income/education effect, even when controlling for these things. We do find, though, that those respondents with greater access to the media are more likely to think that the distribution of income in their country is unfair.

Of course, the direction of causation might be either way - perhaps people who are dissatisfied with income distribution are more likely to consume the media? But interesting nonetheless - and it’s comforting to hear that education makes you happier…

The BBC has been working with the (UK) Arts and Humanities Research Council on a number of research projects as a pilot project and this has been documented on the Knowledge Exchange blog. Now no fewer than 9 papers have been made available via the latest blog posting - really interesting!

100,000 words summarised at a glance - click to see it full-sized.