High housing prices make young people more unhappy, says happiness researcher Mads Larsen

The short version

• Older people become happier while young people become more unhappy.
• The researchers point to the high housing prices as something that forces young people to choose high-paying jobs over professions they find meaningful.
• Research shows that social media and smartphones contribute to young people’s increased materialism.
• Researcher Mads Larsen emphasizes the importance of working for the community to preserve quality of life.

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– It is not surprising that the housing rush affects the psyche of young people. Being able to own your own home gives you enormous freedom.

That’s what Henrik Drivenes, head of HK Ung, the youth organization of Handel & Kontor, says, after hearing researcher Mads Larsen’s explanation of why young people for the first time are least happy in Norway, while older people are the happiest.

– We had the happiest young people in the world, but in recent years we see that young people are only getting unhappier, says Larsen, who is a researcher at the Center for Environment and Development at the University of Oslo.

Larsen is perhaps best known as the author of the book success “Pornopung”, which was later made into a film. However, he is also a recognized researcher, and in recent years has been associated with “The Wellbeing Project”, which investigates what gives us people quality of life.

From happiest to uhappiest

Now he is worried about Norwegian youth. For all graphs of the happiness levels of the young adults, one path goes: On the train.

The winners are the older ones.

– Young and old change places in the happiness hierarchy. It is the opposite of how it has always been.

– When it is so much more expensive to enter the housing market than it was before, we force young people to become more materialistic, to think more selfishly and to choose professions where they earn well rather than work with what gives them opinion.

Property prices are a concrete problem that has the potential to lower young people’s quality of life for many years to come, says Mads Larsen.

– Becoming a nurse is out of the question

In April, Samfunnsökonomiks Analyze predicted that housing prices in Oslo will rise by 30 per cent over the next three years. And: house prices are rising more than wages.

– We need to understand what something as simple as housing prices does to young people’s options. It forces them into a way of thinking characterized by materialism and individualism, says Larsen and tells about one of them he and co-researcher Nina Witoszek spoke to:

– She said her dream was to become a nurse. But when she saw the house prices in Oslo, she chose to become a lawyer instead. The young people feel that they have to compete harder.

He believes that the more materialistic young people become, the more unhappy they become.

– When young people experience all the pressure on work, housing, education and the future, many of them react dysfunctionally by doing more of what makes them unhappy.

– This can be solved

Henrik Drivenes (27) is one of the young adults who have swapped places with their parents’ generation in the happiness graphs.

– When we see that house prices are increasing faster than our own wages, it is no wonder that young people become more cynical, that we think more carefully about how we can afford to own our own home, he says.

Earlier this winter, HK Ung demonstrated together with several youth organizations in Oslo to get a housing policy that they believe is better for young people.

– It is not surprising that it affects the psyche of young people, when being able to own your own home gives enormous freedom, he says.

High housing prices prevent young people from becoming part of democracy, he believes.

– Local democracy in Norway is largely built around condominiums, housing associations or neighborhood associations. If you cannot afford to own, you lose the opportunity to influence the local community.

The politicians can actually do something about house prices, Drivenes believes.

– This can be solved. In Oslo, the new city council cut the property tax, and financed it by stopping the rent-to-own projects that the municipality had with OBOS, he says.

– Community provides quality of life

– I notice that young people are increasingly going after high-status professions.

That’s what Lars Henning Lund, counselor at Blindern high school in Oslo, says. He sees that more and more young people are letting their future choices be guided by money and status instead of interests.

– I try to guide them into career choices that reflect their interests and values, because money is not really something you need to focus on in Norway. But then they say no, I have to become a lawyer to get the money I want. It quickly becomes a disappointment later in life, because they focus on something they don’t really want, he says.

According to Mads Larsen, the main ingredient in the Norwegian happiness formula is to work for the community.

– Quality of life has two main sources: That you work for your own success, and that you work for the community. What Norway has been good at is the latter. We are now about to lose that. We see that in the young people we have spoken to, he says.