The fact that we still refer to things as pre- and post-COVID shows just how impactful this period of time was in our lives. What initially seemed like house arrest for only a few weeks ended up having a lasting impact. One of those impacts appears to be happiness. In a recent post by Aziz Sunderji, who is the author of Home Economics (you should subscribe), he shared this chart:
The fact that we still refer to things as pre- and post-COVID shows just how impactful this period of time was in our lives. What initially seemed like house arrest for only a few weeks ended up having a lasting impact. One of those impacts appears to be happiness. In a recent post by Aziz Sunderji, who is the author of Home Economics (you should subscribe), he shared this chart:
The data is taken from the General Social Survey. What it shows is the shift in the "very happy" group of Americans, and the ten demographic groups that experienced the biggest declines in reported happiness. Overall, the share of Americans reporting to be "very happy" has dropped from 29% before COVID (2016-18) to 22% in our post-COVID world (2022-24).
The biggest decline is among those who make the most money and were previously quite happy. Top earners went from 49% reporting they were "very happy" to 30%. On the other end of the spectrum, the unhappiest people moved the least. If you were unhappy before, chances are you have a similar level of unhappiness today. All of this is problematic.
This is an important societal problem to solve, and I'm not going to come close to doing that in today's pithy blog post. But I did want to point out two things (the latter of which is the key takeaway in Aziz's post).
First, I think it's important to note that at the top of this chart are those with "excellent health." The older I get, the more I have come to realize that the greatest luxury in life is our health. If you don't have your health, nothing else matters. This probably seems obvious, but it remains a real challenge in our increasingly sedentary world.
Second, Aziz notes that the groups that held up the best in terms of happiness all shared one trait: social connection. Interacting with other humans and your friends is good for your mental health!
Of course, the problem is that we are designing our cities and our economies in the opposite direction. Call it "sedentary isolation." AI is a powerful multiplier that allows us to do and produce more while we sit at our desks. And autonomous vehicles are in the process of making long, painful commutes more enjoyable. Now you have more time to sit and stare at a screen while a car drives you!
This is not to say that I'm against these new technologies. I'm not. But driving or not, I don't want to sit in an AV for hours each day. There are real individual and collective costs to social isolation and car-dependent land-use patterns. Let's not forget the simple merits of living in a walkable neighbourhood and socializing with friends, in person.
The data is taken from the General Social Survey. What it shows is the shift in the "very happy" group of Americans, and the ten demographic groups that experienced the biggest declines in reported happiness. Overall, the share of Americans reporting to be "very happy" has dropped from 29% before COVID (2016-18) to 22% in our post-COVID world (2022-24).
The biggest decline is among those who make the most money and were previously quite happy. Top earners went from 49% reporting they were "very happy" to 30%. On the other end of the spectrum, the unhappiest people moved the least. If you were unhappy before, chances are you have a similar level of unhappiness today. All of this is problematic.
This is an important societal problem to solve, and I'm not going to come close to doing that in today's pithy blog post. But I did want to point out two things (the latter of which is the key takeaway in Aziz's post).
First, I think it's important to note that at the top of this chart are those with "excellent health." The older I get, the more I have come to realize that the greatest luxury in life is our health. If you don't have your health, nothing else matters. This probably seems obvious, but it remains a real challenge in our increasingly sedentary world.
Second, Aziz notes that the groups that held up the best in terms of happiness all shared one trait: social connection. Interacting with other humans and your friends is good for your mental health!
Of course, the problem is that we are designing our cities and our economies in the opposite direction. Call it "sedentary isolation." AI is a powerful multiplier that allows us to do and produce more while we sit at our desks. And autonomous vehicles are in the process of making long, painful commutes more enjoyable. Now you have more time to sit and stare at a screen while a car drives you!
This is not to say that I'm against these new technologies. I'm not. But driving or not, I don't want to sit in an AV for hours each day. There are real individual and collective costs to social isolation and car-dependent land-use patterns. Let's not forget the simple merits of living in a walkable neighbourhood and socializing with friends, in person.
Cover photo by Ryan Searle on Unsplash
Chart from Aziz Sunderji, "The Great Happiness Compression," Home Economics.
Cover photo by Ryan Searle on Unsplash
Chart from Aziz Sunderji, "The Great Happiness Compression," Home Economics.
Regular readers of this blog might remember that last "summer" (it was still chilly), I biked for brain health here in Toronto.
I rode 75 km, raised $3,800, and helped Multiplex Construction Canada raise over $14,000, with 100% of these donations going directly to the Baycrest Foundation to fund work related to dementia, Alzheimer's, and other brain-related illnesses.
This summer I'll be riding again on Sunday, May 31, 2026, except with a few changes:
They've moved the starting location to the Aga Khan Museum (architecture by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki).
They've increased the longest circuit to 90 km.
We've created our own Globizen team! If we're feeling really ambitious, maybe we'll even create our own cycling bibs. (This strikes me as a low probability scenario.)
If you're up for it, I would encourage you to join our team and ride for brain health. Alternatively, you can always just participate with your wallet.
Full disclosure caveat: Bianca and I are expecting our first child (a girl) in June. This ride is closeish to the due date, creating at a minimum three possible scenarios for the day:
Scenario one is that she is not yet born on May 31 and I ride as one would expect.
Scenario two is that she is born early, and I then spend this Sunday morning at home in some kind of sleep-deprived state. (Or, the "vibe" is that I should probably stay home.)
Regular readers of this blog might remember that last "summer" (it was still chilly), I biked for brain health here in Toronto.
I rode 75 km, raised $3,800, and helped Multiplex Construction Canada raise over $14,000, with 100% of these donations going directly to the Baycrest Foundation to fund work related to dementia, Alzheimer's, and other brain-related illnesses.
This summer I'll be riding again on Sunday, May 31, 2026, except with a few changes:
They've moved the starting location to the Aga Khan Museum (architecture by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki).
They've increased the longest circuit to 90 km.
We've created our own Globizen team! If we're feeling really ambitious, maybe we'll even create our own cycling bibs. (This strikes me as a low probability scenario.)
If you're up for it, I would encourage you to join our team and ride for brain health. Alternatively, you can always just participate with your wallet.
Full disclosure caveat: Bianca and I are expecting our first child (a girl) in June. This ride is closeish to the due date, creating at a minimum three possible scenarios for the day:
Scenario one is that she is not yet born on May 31 and I ride as one would expect.
Scenario two is that she is born early, and I then spend this Sunday morning at home in some kind of sleep-deprived state. (Or, the "vibe" is that I should probably stay home.)
Conventional wisdom suggests that if you're going to invest $10 million into an illiquid real estate investment that will not bear delicious fruit for 7 to 10 years, you may want to be compensated for the illiquid nature of your commitment. In other words, there's an "illiquidity premium." Flexibility is worth something. If you can get the same return and have the flexibility to get your money back when you want it, isn't that better? I don't know; maybe that's not always the case. Here's an excerpt from a clever article written by Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, where he argues the reverse:
If people get that PE [private equity] is truly volatile but you just don’t see it, what’s all the excitement about? Well, big time multi-year illiquidity and its oft-accompanying pricing opacity may actually be a feature not a bug! Liquid, accurately priced investments let you know precisely how volatile they are and they smack you in the face with it. What if many investors actually realize that this accurate and timely information will make them worse investors as they’ll use that liquidity to panic and redeem at the worst times? What if illiquid, very infrequently and inaccurately priced investments made them better investors as essentially it allows them to ignore such investments given low measured volatility and very modest paper drawdowns?
Perhaps another way to think about illiquid private investments is that they kind of force you to think more like Warren Buffett. He has so many great lines to this effect: "If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes." And: "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient." He has also written over the years about how a tolerance for short-term volatility can improve long-term prospects. So, behaving in this way, it would seem, is generally good for making money.
The problem — and this is really Cliff's more precise argument — is that the majority of people simply aren't good at being like Warren Buffett. We're impatient and emotional. That's why he's so remarkable. His approach certainly sounds simple, but it's clearly not so easy. Illiquidity can help with this. It removes the fraught thinking part and might actually protect you from your own thoughts and emotions.
Conventional wisdom suggests that if you're going to invest $10 million into an illiquid real estate investment that will not bear delicious fruit for 7 to 10 years, you may want to be compensated for the illiquid nature of your commitment. In other words, there's an "illiquidity premium." Flexibility is worth something. If you can get the same return and have the flexibility to get your money back when you want it, isn't that better? I don't know; maybe that's not always the case. Here's an excerpt from a clever article written by Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, where he argues the reverse:
If people get that PE [private equity] is truly volatile but you just don’t see it, what’s all the excitement about? Well, big time multi-year illiquidity and its oft-accompanying pricing opacity may actually be a feature not a bug! Liquid, accurately priced investments let you know precisely how volatile they are and they smack you in the face with it. What if many investors actually realize that this accurate and timely information will make them worse investors as they’ll use that liquidity to panic and redeem at the worst times? What if illiquid, very infrequently and inaccurately priced investments made them better investors as essentially it allows them to ignore such investments given low measured volatility and very modest paper drawdowns?
Perhaps another way to think about illiquid private investments is that they kind of force you to think more like Warren Buffett. He has so many great lines to this effect: "If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes." And: "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient." He has also written over the years about how a tolerance for short-term volatility can improve long-term prospects. So, behaving in this way, it would seem, is generally good for making money.
The problem — and this is really Cliff's more precise argument — is that the majority of people simply aren't good at being like Warren Buffett. We're impatient and emotional. That's why he's so remarkable. His approach certainly sounds simple, but it's clearly not so easy. Illiquidity can help with this. It removes the fraught thinking part and might actually protect you from your own thoughts and emotions.
And I suppose scenario three is that I don't finish the ride and I end up at the hospital in head-to-toe lycra, clicking and clacking around in my cycling shoes.
Scenarios one and two feel more optimal, in my humble opinion.
Cover photo: Len Abelman (Principal at WZMH Architects) and me completing the Bike for Brain Health end-of-summer follow-up ride in September 2025.
And I suppose scenario three is that I don't finish the ride and I end up at the hospital in head-to-toe lycra, clicking and clacking around in my cycling shoes.
Scenarios one and two feel more optimal, in my humble opinion.
Cover photo: Len Abelman (Principal at WZMH Architects) and me completing the Bike for Brain Health end-of-summer follow-up ride in September 2025.
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Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
