DP: Defining and Measuring Happiness

In my first blog relating Development and Happiness I suggested that Global Happiness should be considered the ultimate goal for Development. I am inclined to believe that in order to establish policies based on people’s happiness, it is necessary to define happiness and be able to measure its levels.

Since Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics the Humanity hears that ‘Money doesn’t bring happiness’. But only in the 1970’s an article entitled Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? by Richard Easterlin presented empirical evidence that there is no link between a society’s Economic Development and its level of happiness (Easterlin Paradox) and EF Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful proclaimed ‘The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product’.

In the same 1970’s, Bhutan was the first country in the world to reject GNP/GDP as a measure to development. The video below tells the story and is really worth watching.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bhutan is, since then, the only country in the world that adopted its people’s happiness as the ultimate goal for Development. In 1999, local Government established the Centre for Bhutan Studies which is an autonomous research institute focused on ‘promoting and deepening the understanding of Gross National Happiness (GNH)’ and helping policymakers defining development strategies towards promoting population’s happiness enhancement. Based on a sound methodology, the Centre conceived the Gross National Happiness Index which is the result of a sophisticated survey that measured population’s happiness through their individual wellbeing in 9 domains composed by 33 indicators illustrated in the figure below.

Source: A Short Guide to Gross National Happiness Index (2012)

So, it is possible to define and measure Happiness!!!

Of course there are many critics to the subjectivity of the GNH Index and about this I prefer to quote The World Happiness Report: ‘A generation of studies by psychologists, economists, pollsters, sociologists, and others has shown that happiness, though indeed a subjective experience, can be objectively measured, assessed, correlated with observable brain functions, and related to the characteristics of an individual and the society. Asking people whether they are happy, or satisfied with their lives, offers important information about the society. It can signal underlying crises or hidden strengths. It can suggest the need for change.’

Regarding the criticism about the complexity of the GNH Index, I agree with Carol Graham who says: “happiness is, in the end, a much more complicated concept than income. Yet it is also a laudable and much more ambitious policy objective.” and “It doesn’t have to be perfect; after all, it took us decades to agree upon what to include in GDP and it is still far from a perfect metric.”

Now, I’m really happy that I’ve learnt that, although Happynomics isn’t considered a science (yet), there are many people dedicating their works to effectively valuing things that don’t have price tags (or material value). So let’s adopt this New Value Paradigm!!

Comments Off on DP: Defining and Measuring Happiness / 12 Jan 2013 por Andrea Mara Hanai
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