Amy Scott

It's not the house.

And that might not be a surprise, but it's kind of the opposite of the American dream, which is the assumption that if we had a bigger house, we would just be happier.

We'd have more freedom.

And in fact, for most people, it's the opposite.

What there is, however, is something called the inverted U hypothesis.

So the number of people in your house, the peak happiness is four to six.

Too few, just by yourself, or too many can be stressful.

Around the world, the data was pretty consistent.

However, the size of the house itself was not.

There really wasn't much effect at all, much relationship at all between the size of the house and one's happiness.

So if you look at how the American house has evolved over time, what, it's like doubled in size since the 1970s?

And yet households have gotten smaller.

So why are we doing this?

That's right.

We've gone from about, I think, around 1,600 square feet in the 70s to almost 2,500 today.

You know, there's a lot of reasons that drive this.

There's certainly zoning that has favored larger houses.

Builders make more money in larger houses.

And there's sort of this idea that we need bigger homes, even when our families are smaller.

And it's interesting you talk about how it kind of depends on how we use the space.