It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of our emeritus professor ‘Social conditions for human happiness’ Ruut Veenhoven, Monday December 9. He was emeritus at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences.
Ruut Veenhoven was nationally and internationally known as the first happiness professor. He founded the Journal of Happiness Studies, the driving force behind the World Database of Happiness. Ruut Veenhoven was a pioneer in scientific research on happiness. His first publication on the subject was in 1970. He is one of the founding fathers of happiness science.
He achieved all this at our faculty since he joined the Sociology programme of the then Netherlands School of Economics in 1969 as associate professor of social psychology. However, he took his first steps in Sociology in Rotterdam in 1964 as one of the first sociology students in Rotterdam. After that, he has always remained associated with Rotterdam sociology. In 2001, he was appointed to the chair 'Social conditions for human happiness'. Before that, he was an endowed professor of Humanistics at Utrecht University. After his retirement in 2007, he continued to work on his oeuvre and the World Database of Happiness (WDH). First at ESSB, and from 2012, he was associated with the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organisation (EHERO). EHERO is part of the Erasmus Holding.
However, through a Hospitality Agreement, he has always remained associated with ESSB. He has also held various administrative roles at the faculty, serving as vice-dean in the 1980s and chair of the sociology department in the early 1990s.
Happiness Veenhoven called 'life satisfaction'. He was the one who first defined the concept of happiness that way. 'It's about your judgement about your life as a whole,' he clarified. 'That is a bit different from your mood of the day. You can be satisfied with your life so that your report grade would be an eight, while today you are quite grumpy. So those are different things.' Veenhoven's underlying idea was that societies can increase liveability if we know under what circumstances happiness occurs most often. Veenhoven facilitated the informed pursuit of happiness.
In his PhD research, Veenhoven focused on mapping the circumstances under which people are happy. This work resulted in his life's work, the World Database of Happiness, which brings together some 50,000 standardised descriptions of empirical findings on happiness.
For the first few years, support from the faculty for building the Database was modest. He managed this thanks to the many volunteers he managed to motivate and commit to filling the database time and again, and who were housed at ESSB. Volunteers will complete the work on the World Database of Happiness by including another 1,500 surveys. The WDH will remain publicly available and will be complete for research published before 2021. Every year, the WDH still attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors worldwide.
He also worked for many years with Rotterdam psychologists, with whom he developed, among other things, De Gelukswijzer. De Gelukswijzer is a combination of a self-help website and scientific research. Participants report how happy they feel and can then compare their happiness with similar participants. Participants could also keep a Happiness Diary. It allowed them to gain more insight into their happiness and thus make more informed life choices. The Happiness Guide has led to several publications in top journals that are influential in the happiness literature.
His initial specialisation was sexology, which has always remained a side interest in his work. He remained true to the ideals of the 1960s by working for the liberation and emancipation of individuals. Between 1970 and 1990, he was a leading advocate in promoting the acceptance of voluntary childlessness and the reform of abortion laws in the Netherlands. He also regularly spoke about the revived sense of happiness of parents whose children had left home.
Over the years, Ruut has been a familiar face in the media. Whether it was interviews with Margriet or NRC, or appearances at Rijnmond or NOS, Ruut was on everyone's lips. Even international media often knew where to find him. He did this not to profile himself but because he felt it was of great importance to share scientific insights with society.
He was a social colleague who was genuinely interested in others. Always up for a good conversation with colleagues. Ruut leaves an impressive body of scientific work, which will undoubtedly inspire future happiness scientists.
We wish his loved ones much strength and support in these difficulte times
On behalf of staff and students Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam,
Prof.dr. Victor Bekkers
Dean
Prof.dr. Laura den Dulk
Chair Departement Public Administration & Sociology
- More information
Marjolein Kooistra, communications ESSB, + 31 683676038, kooistra@essb.eur.nl
