The Success Sequence and Happiness

 There is an interesting series of posts by Bryan Caplan here about how the success sequence helps avoid poverty. This sequence is

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

Helps you avoid poverty. "97% of Millennials who follow what has been called the “success sequence”—that is, who get at least a high school degree, work, and then marry before having any children, in that order—are not poor by the time they reach their prime young adult years (ages 28-34)."

The posts argue if the sequence is cause or effect, really something that can be advised and other things. 
But what struck me about it was how these three also correlate with happiness. Telling people how to avoid poverty might seem like a conspiracy by the Capitialist Man. Telling people how to get happy seems less sinister. Though of course there are all sorts of cause and effect stuff here. And poverty and happiness are really closely related so it could be that it is just the same thing being measured and the only difference is the framing.

Would these three mean you were happier even apart from the poverty effect?

Full time job: "Many studies have tried to quantify the adverse effect of unemployment on well-being using survey data on life satisfaction. For example, the raw difference in average life satisfaction between unemployed and employed workers aged 20–60 years in the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–2011 amounts to 1.3 points on a 0–10 scale." 

Finish high school: People who finish secondary education are happier.

Too Educated to be Happy? An investigation into the relationship between education and subjective well-being by Erich Striessnig this paper goes into how married people are happier as well.

Get married before you have children:
'The difference in quality of life between the lowest and highest education group is as big as the difference between someone being married compared to being single.' from the paper above. 
A longitudinal observational study conducted in Germany between the years of 1984 and 2000 showed more conclusive results, where people who married eventually were generally happier and more satisfied than people who remained single.

The success sequence seems a pretty good way to be happy.

Zero Covid Ireland and Trips Abroad

 It might not be possible to have zero covid Ireland because too many people have to come into and out of the country. How many trips into and out of the country are necessary? This is an attempt to get some figures together because I have found no figures being actually argued just people saying 'Ireland is not New Zealand'

Irish born people living abroad coming home for sick relatives, funerals etc. Close to a million people born here live abroad. Say 10% have to return in a year that would be 100K.

Foreign born people having to go home for sick relatives, funerals etc. CSO data on Foreign born people is at Total is 393,959 people. 400K say. How many would have to travel? Say 10% a year or 40K.

Lorry Drivers About 150K Lorry journeys take place into Ireland each year. How many individual drivers? Say 10k I'll ignore drivers for the moment but they are an issue.

Border travel. About 25K people cross the border to work. But I will assume an all island approach for the moment. I did some NI calculations in this post

No quarantine or vaccine is going to be 100% effective. But it does not have to be just the number of cases coming in has to be kept low. For argument's sake say 1 per day can come into the country (not just a hotel) and later develop symptoms.  150K people having to come into Ireland per year. Or about 400 a day. 10 day quarantine means you'd need 4000 hotel spaces. Even after 14 days in quarantine about 5% of those infected could still develop symptoms later. At 400 per day where 1% of people carried an infection would be 4 people. 5% of those would be one person every 5 days would do quarantine and still have an infection after it finished. Requiring those coming in to be vaccinated might change these odds significantly to the better but not in an easy to calculate way yet.

New Zealand has a high foreign born population. 1.27 million live there who were born outside NZ. They also have a lot of people born there abroad who might need to come home about 14% which is only slightly lower than Ireland.

Back of the envelope if 10% of people have to go home per year. And we have a long quarantine that is enforced. We could keep cases introduced to quite a low number. 

Zero Covid Ireland Possibilities for Northern Ireland

Setting up a border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is really difficult. The length of the border and number of crossings is huge. 23,000 to 30,000 people commute across the Irish border to work.

But if a border on the island is not possible there are alternatives.

1. Quarantine for all people coming into the island.

2. Quarantine for all people coming onto the island from outside the UK. Scotland seem to be moving toward this option.

3. People coming into NI have to be vaccinated. The UK is vaccinating very fast and by the time this lockdown ends they could have enough people vaccinated that this sort of restriction becomes possible. Vaccination is not as effective as 14 days of quarantine. But even that is not 100% effective. 

Zero covid does not mean stopping every case it just means keeping levels low enough that outbreaks can be shut down quickly. These options might not be as effective as full quarantine but they could be effective enough. And at that time NI might have enough vaccinated that outbreaks are easier to control.