In recent years, a small army of happiness gurus has lined up to proclaim the ills of modern society, and its failure to make us feel better. We have more money, say some, but family life has eroded. We live longer, but crime has risen. Some have even blamed affluence itself, arguing that the dizzying range of lifestyle options that we now confront frustrates the pursuit of happiness. Yet contrary to the assertions of pessimists, newly released data, recently published in an article with colleagues from Jacobs University Bremen and the University of Michigan, shows that today’s world is a happier one. From 1981 to the present, more than 350,000 people from 90 countries were asked about their happiness and their satisfaction with life as a whole… How is it that the world is getting happier? In the words of Thucydides, the secret of happiness is freedom.