Happiness Economics is a relatively new field that is still being discovered and studied. The 2012 Happy Planet Index (HPI) and the 2012 OECD Better Life Index are both used to measure the levels of happiness found in different countries across the globe. This is a hard factor to measure between individuals, let alone diverse cultures that hold different values; however, researchers have found that using cross-sectional data across nations and time produce patterns in the determinants of happiness.
The HPI looks at how many long, happy and satisfied lives are produced per unit of environmental output in 151 countries. This takes into consideration life expectancy, ecological footprint, and life satisfaction. According to this way of ranking, Costa Rica tops the list. Nine of the top ten countries in this list are from Latin America and the Caribbean while a majority of the countries at the bottom of the list are from Africa and the Middle East. Developed nations come in lower on this list due to their tendency to score low in the aspect of an ecological footprint (the United States comes in at 105 on this list).
The OECD Better Life Index looks at more factors in determining happiness; however, they only rank 36 countries. Though they take many more variables into consideration, this index focuses on the Life Satisfaction Survey which measures how people feel about the entirety of their lives rather than their happiness at that moment. On this list, Denmark comes in first with countries from Northern and Central Europe looking to be the happiest and countries in Eastern and Southern Europe fill the bottom of the list. The United States comes in twelfth in this list.
Though these lists are different in their findings, I think that the study of happiness economics is an interesting one and could hold potential for vast discovery in the future with some refining of the research methods used. Countries that rank high on these lists are not necessarily the same ones that rank high on other economic charts.
http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/ne-data/11940-happiest-countries.html#axzz2If1h8WcD
6 comments:
As Professor Skosples and this article tell us, there are many different criteria we can use to judge an economic system. In our class we look at things like economic growth, efficiency, and equity. However, we all know happiness is what we as individuals are trying to maximize. Happiness economics seems like a logical extension of microeconomic theory, which focuses on utility maximization. The problem with utility analysis is that we cannot put prices on certain things that give us happiness. What is it worth to you to live in a pollution free environment?How much are you willing to pay for another unit of pollution free air?Since we lack concrete numbers the next best thing is to analyse prices that are somehow related to the actual thing we want to evaluate. Hedonic analysis used by environmental economists comes to mind, which attempts to evaluate environmental benefits based on housing prices in the surrounding areas. It seems that Happiness economists have found a similar type of analysis with these Happy Planet and Better Life Indices. Hopefully this will gain more momentum in the future.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-happiest-countries-in-the-world-according-to-north-korea-2011-5
Those in charge of this study clearly needed to do some more research.
The link you posted does not say what factors were taken into consideration when giving countries point values.
Your article reminds me of a documentary I watched this summer called "Happy." It touched on this new way of measuring the happiness of countries, HPI, and did some filming and interviewing of some folks in Denmark (I think) who were living in community homes. The homes are becoming a popular choice as far as living arrangements for single mothers, widows or orphans. It's basically a big apartment with a collection of all different people who create their own family. The interviewees reported that living in such a cooperative environment was both an economic and emotional salvation for them when they needed it most. Another interesting perspective the documentary pointed out was that one of the happiest places in the world, the village of Okinawa in the southern islands of Japan, is a relatively poor country, and also has some of the longest living people in the world today. I agree with you that HPI has a lot of potential in economic research, and I think we can learn a lot from the happiest places as far as making improvements in our own country.
Going off of what Kelsey said, I also watched that documentary in a sociology class. One of the other stories in the documentary was about a man who lived in a poor part of India and worked a physically intensive job all day and came home to a single room house that he shared with his family. And yet despite all of this, he and his family were extremely happy. Even though economists tend to look at development as a good thing, I think that sometimes development can lead to negative consequences in terms of happiness as well as it being potentially harmful for groups of people who have had development and westernization pushed on them.
I was completely kidding about North Korea being the happiest country in the world- I just thought it was hilarious that they're putting out their own "happiness index" in response to surveys like this one. Sorry about the confusion!
It's really interesting that the Happy Planet Index places several Latin American countries at the top of the ranking system. I suspect that most of these countries have smaller environmental footprints simply because they have not yet industrialized, but the high levels of life satisfaction in these nations came as a surprise to me. Colombia is well known for violence and kidnappings related to the drug trade, and the governments of both Cuba and Venezuela are authoritarian in nature.
I agree with the previous two comments- it's clear that economic development and prosperity alone is not enough to guarantee human happiness.
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