Social conditions improve, yet discontent increases as expectations outpace improvements.
Tocqueville's 1856 observation that the French Revolution came after conditions had improved, not during the worst of them. Rising expectations outpace improvement, so grievance rises with progress.
In practice
- A country that raises literacy and life expectancy for thirty years records falling satisfaction throughout, and both figures are correct.
- A company that fixes four of its five worst processes receives more complaints about the fifth than it ever received about all five.
- Standing
- Compare the paradox of declining female happiness, which reports the same shape in survey data.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- Proverbs that recur across cultures