Join the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County and Anne Arundel Women Giving Together for the first 2018 Community Impact Speaker Series event, featuring guest speaker and author Carol Graham.
The Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these is the pursuit of happiness. Carol Graham draws on cutting-edge research linking income inequality with well-being to show how the widening prosperity gap has led to rising inequality in people’s beliefs, hopes, and aspirations.
The high costs of being poor are most evident not in material deprivation but rather in stress, insecurity, and lack of hope. The result is an optimism gap between rich and poor that, if left unchecked, could lead to an increasingly divided society.
Graham reveals how people who do not believe in their own futures are unlikely to invest in them, and how the consequences can range from job instability and poor education to greater mortality rates, failed marriages, and higher rates of incarceration. She describes how the optimism gap is reflected in the very words people use—the wealthy use words that reflect knowledge acquisition and healthy behaviors, while the words of the poor reflect desperation, short-term outlooks, and patchwork solutions. She also explains why the least optimistic people in America are poor whites, not poor blacks or Hispanics. She shows the importance of well-being measures in identifying and monitoring trends in life satisfaction and optimism—and misery and despair—and demonstrate show hope and happiness can lead to improved economic outcomes.
Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. Her books include The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being and Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires.
What: 2018 Community Impact Speaker Series Event: Happiness for All?
Who: Carol Graham
Where: Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center, Annapolis, MD
When: January 23, 2018, 6:00-8:00pm
Cost: Free, space is limited, pre-registration is requested
We get a lot of emails and come across a ton of non-profit training events, and try to share interesting and relevant event information in this space. The Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County is a partner of The Helen J. Serini Foundation. For more information about the Community Foundation, visit cfaac.org. To submit an event for consideration on this blog, email info@hjsfoundation.org.