“HAPPINESS INDEX to gauge Britain’s national mood,” was the headline of Britain’s Guardian newspaper (www.guardian.co.uk) last Monday.

The story ran: “The UK government is poised to start measuring people’s psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness. Despite ‘nervousness’ in Downing Street at the prospect of testing the national mood amid deep cuts and last week’s riot in Westminster, the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron’s long-stated ambition of gauging ‘general wellbeing.’

“Countries such as France and Canada are looking at similar initiatives as governments around the world come under pressure to put less store on conventional economic measures of prosperity such as gross domestic product. …

“On 25 November, the government will ask the independent national statistician Jil Matheson to devise questions to add to the existing household survey by as early as next spring. It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the government’s aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their ‘life goals’.”

On France, the Guardian said: “The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced last year he intended to include happiness and wellbeing in France’s measurement of economic progress. Sarkozy was responding to recommendations made by two Nobel economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, who called on world leaders to move away from a purely economic concept of gross domestic product, which measures economic production, to wellbeing and sustainability.”

On Canada, the Guardian quoted a member of Canada’s National Statistics Council thus: “The UK plans are putting into action the two most important elements of the Stiglitz/Sen report: systematically measuring subjective wellbeing as part of a broader national accounting system, and using these data to inform policy choices. … Canadian statisticians and researchers also poll subjective wellbeing across the country, but the data have thus far not attracted much policy attention. What is or could be dramatically different in the UK is for the government not just to undertake more widespread and thorough collection of subjective wellbeing data, but also to give them a central place in the choice and evaluation of public policies. That would be a global first.”

Incidentally, the Guardian overlooked Bhutan, which officially seeks to promote Gross National Happiness. But so far the Bhutan government has only produced technical papers on it, and no actual measure of its GNH.

The role of government. It is quite proper for a government to design and regularly generate its own official measure or measures (for there need not, and I think should not, be a single index) of its national wellbeing, if it sincerely wishes to apply public policy to that end. The UK government would be the first to do so, unless beaten to it by France or Bhutan; I don’t know if Canada has made a policy statement on it.

The interest in “happiness” of the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and Bhutan shows their dissatisfaction with Gross Domestic Product as a measure of wellbeing. By “happiness” they surely mean, not a single concept, but a heading for the many social conditions that are much more meaningful than GDP to their citizens.

The role of surveys. Good practice of measuring national wellbeing or “happiness” necessarily involves scientific surveys of the general public’s subjective statements or reports about their own personal feelings and conditions. Such reports should be accepted as truthful, and not denigrated as “perceptions,” as though the people’s feelings and conditions could be changed by mere publicity campaigns.

Simple survey questions like “How happy are you, in general,” or “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole,” have been asked in many countries, including the Philippines, with interesting findings, but are too broad for government-policy use. Wellbeing has many dimensions. People can feel separate satisfactions with personal provision for basic needs, health, family relationships, income, work, etc., and also separate satisfactions with social conditions like the quality of governance, democratic rights and freedoms, the environment, security against warlords, criminals and rebel groups, etc. A government’s survey agenda should be wide, yet need only include matters for which the government may be held responsible.

The relevance of unhappiness. In surveys of wellbeing, I think that those at the lower end of the subjective scales, i.e. the “unhappy,” deserve special study. Surely, those involved in the strikes in France and the riots in Britain were not happy people. The enjoyment of justice, unlike wealth, is not something that haves can share with have-nots.

Reliability. Finally, how can the public trust that surveys done by official statistical agencies on the people’s wellbeing are fair, and not biased towards findings favorable to the government? In the first place, the official agencies should be transparent with their survey methodologies, and should open their original or raw data for study.

The bottom line is that the people should see if the official surveys are replicated and validated by non-governmental surveys, from time to time. Any subjective subject matter—for instance the people’s personal voting intentions—is proven to have been surveyed objectively when the findings are the same, regardless of who the surveyors are.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20101120-304218/The-UK-wants-a-happiness-index

---
Related Links:

Social Democracy and Happiness
http://www.social-europe.eu/2010/01/social-democracy-and-happiness/