We Live Better Than Ever (And Still Think We Don’t)
Hedonic adaptation and the statistical error distorting our perception of progress
The other day I tried an uncomfortable thought experiment.
Imagine travelling back 100 years and describing how an average family lives today in Spain: central heating, clean running water on demand, antibiotics, dramatically lower child mortality, affordable air travel, instant access to almost unlimited knowledge from a device in your pocket.
The likely reaction would not be indifference. It would be disbelief.
Yet if you ask people today whether they think they live better than their grandparents, the answer is often hesitant. Sometimes even negative.
The explanation is not purely economic. It is psychological.
Our brains do not compare with the past. They compare sideways. With the neighbour. With LinkedIn. With Instagram. With whoever seems to be one step ahead.
Meanwhile, structural improvements fade into the background.
Life expectancy in Spain (my country) has risen from around 40 years at the start of the twentieth century to over 83 today. Infant mortality has fallen by more than 95%. Access to higher education has become widespread. Globally, extreme poverty has dropped from affecting over 80% of the population in 1820 to under 10% before the pandemic.
None of this produces daily excitement. Because we adapt.
Moral
Hedonic adaptation turns us into poor statisticians.
We quickly internalise improvements and treat them as if they had always existed. The extraordinary becomes standard. The standard stops feeling extraordinary.
This does not mean there are no problems. There are many, and some are serious. But our perception of stagnation often coexists with historically unprecedented levels of material wellbeing.
The issue is not necessarily that we live worse. It is that we compare worse.
Conclusion
There is an interesting paradox: the more objective wellbeing improves, the more demanding subjective comparison becomes.
The goal is not to convince ourselves that everything is fine. That would be naïve.
But it may be worth remembering that silent progress still counts, even if it does not generate notifications.
Living better does not always feel like living better.
And that may be one of the defining cognitive distortions of our time.
Sources
Enlightenment Now – Steven Pinker
World Bank historical poverty data
Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain) – Life expectancy and mortality data