Why Were HappyBy Arthur C.BrooksYou want to be happy. Im going to make this assumption, and I think Im in pretty smart company to do so. Socrates once asked his students, Do not all men desire happiness? A student answered him, There is no one who does not.If Socrates was right, isnt it reasonable to assume that a decent nation will, at minimum, create the conditions in which its citizens can best pursue happiness? In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders didnt treat happiness as some fuzzy concept; they believed that people wanted happiness and had the right to pursue it. Along with life and liberty, happiness was the connection between the Creator and our nations destiny, and the ability of its citizens to pursue and achieve happiness was a measure of the effectiveness and morality of the state.What matters most for happiness is not having a lot of things but having healthy values.But todays leaders and policymakers seem to have forgotten this. To hear politicians talk about gross domestic product, health-care reform, and Social Security, youd think that this nations Founding Fathers held as self-evident that we are endowed by our Creator with the ability to purchase new, high-quality consumer durables each and every year, or to enjoy healthy economic growth with low inflation and full employment. The Founders didnt talk about these matters, not because theyre unimportant, but because they believed happiness went deeper.As a professor of business and government policy, Ive long been interested in the pursuit of happiness as a national concept. According to hundreds of reliable surveys of thousands of people across the land, happy people increase our prosperity and strengthen our communities. They make better citizens - and better citizens are vital to making our nation healthy and strong. Happiness, in other words, is important for America. So when I chanced upon data a couple of years ago saying that certain Americans were living in a manner that facilitated happiness - while others were not - I jumped on it.I wanted to be able to articulate which personal lifestyles and public policies would make us the happiest nation possible. I also wanted to know which of my own values, learned during my childhood in Seattle and practiced during my career as a university professor, were the most conducive to happiness. I had always thought that marching to the beat of my own drummer and making up my own values as I went along were the right things to do, and that traditional values, to put it bluntly, were for suckers.Turns out that I was in for some surprises.First, just what is happiness? Most researchers agree that it involves an assessment of the good and bad in our lives. Its the emotional balance sheet we keep that allows us to say honestly whether were living a happy life, in spite of bad things now and then.You might suspect that Americans are getting happier all the time. After all, many （though clearly not all） are getting richer, and this should make them better able and equipped to follow their dreams. On the other hand, theres a lot of talk about the good old days, when kids could play outside without any worry about being kidnapped. And theres a great deal of stress in this country right now, due to financial concerns, negative workplace environments, and chronic health problems, among other pressing issues.But average happiness levels in America have stayed largely constant for many years. In 1972, 30 percent of the population said they were very happy with their lives, according to the National Opinion Research Centers General Social Survey. In 1982, 31 percent said so, and in 2006, 31 percent said so as well. The percentage saying they were not too happy was similarly constant, generally hovering around 13 percent.The factors that add up to a happy life for most people are not what we typically hear about. Things like winning the lottery, getting liposuction, and earning a masters degree dont make people happy over the long haul. Rather, the key to happiness, and the difference between happy and unhappy Americans, is a life that reflects values and practices like faith, hard work, marriage, charity, and freedom.Happiness Predictor 1: FaithRoughly 85 percent of Americans identify with a religion, and about a third of Americans attend a house of worship every week or more. These statistics have changed relatively little over the decades. By international standards, Americas level of religious practice is exceptionally high. In Holland, for example, just 9 percent of the population attends church on a regular basis; in France, its 7 percent; in Latvia, 3 percent.In general, religious Americans （those who attend a place of worship almost every week or more） are happier than those who rarely or never attend. In 2004 the General Social Survey found that 43 percent of religious folks said they were very happy with their lives, compared with