GDP – That’s So Last Year, GWB Is Where It’s At

Wednesday, November 17, 2010 – 18:48

In 1972, Bhutan’s king proclaimed that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.”  Bhutan, one of the poorest nations led the world to seriously consider measuring the happiness of its citizens as opposed to how much money they generated.  Every year since then, the Prime Minister reports results to the National Assembly.

Happy PlanetThe recent news that the Government is contemplating a general wellbeing index (GWB) has attracted a lot of attention and commentary and since this is a ‘wellbeing’ blog, who am I to buck the trend?  In fact, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) was already working on implementing a measure so it was going to happen even without the Government’s involvement.  In 2006, a UK poll found that 81 percent of people believed that the government’s primary objective should be the “greatest happiness” of its citizens, rather than the “‘greatest wealth.”

Measuring citizen’s wellbeing is not a new concept and when David Cameron as the newly elected Conservative leader in 2005 first muted the idea, many other counties were either measuring it already or in the process of implementing it.   For example, Thailand instituted an index after the coup of 2006 and last year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, organized a commission led by Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to re-examine how France measures progress.  Sarkozy embraced their recommendations to measure non GDP indicators.  As far back as 1968, Bobby Kennedy, of the political Kennedy dynasty of the US, is reported to have said “we cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones average, nor national achievement by the gross domestic product.”

In 1974, psychologist Richard Easterlin showed reported that after a certain point, rises in national wealth are not matched by increases in happiness for it citizens.  As usual with scientists, there has been some controversy over the study but it is generally accepted that richer countries are not as happy as most would expect.  The whole study of happiness has sprouted Happiness Economics, numerous bestselling books such as Oliver James’s ‘Affluenza’, numerous websites such the ‘Happy Planet Index’ and a branch of the self-help industry worth billions of dollars a year.

To measure happiness is fraught.  Not all of us will agree with all of the aspects that the scientists come up with, things like psychological well-being; good health; work-life balance; community vitality; education; cultural preservation; environmental protection; good governance; and financial security.   For example, it is said that marriage and having a family is good for your level of happiness, but that of course assumes that it is a good marriage in the first place and I suspect that many parents of rebellious teenagers might not be very happy.  Access to health care is another one but there is a difference to there being a clinic at the end of my road to actually being able to afford the treatment required.

To top it all, we humans are finicky.  Think about times when we think something will make us happier and then when we do achieve that promotion, that new car, that expensive honeymoon, we realise very quickly how it fails to lead to greater happiness.   Is our reported unhappiness in the Western world due to the fact that our expectations are higher?

Whatever the Office of National Statistics comes up with to measure our general wellbeing, it is unlikely please everybody especially a government that its doing its worst to make us unhappy, but then complaining does makes some people happy.

May you find the balance.

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