World Happiness Report

Richard Layard's book on happiness came out in 2005, and since that time there has been an increasing influence of this way of thinking along with the emergence of positive psychology as a serious academic discipline and the longitudinal finding that increase in GNP beyond a certain point is not correlated with an increase in happiness and well-being. Layard's thinking comes out of welfare economics, while Jeffrey Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and well-known for his radical and farsighted views expressed in a series of Reith lectures. The direction of travel is the eventual replacement of GNP as the leading economic and political indicator, thus opening up the possibility of reframing political debate and aspirations.

This report is, as far as I know, the first of its kind and is as such a landmark publication. After the introduction, the first part looks at the state of world happiness, causes of happiness and misery, and some important policy implications. The second part is mainly taken up with a case study of Bhutan with their well-known framework of Gross National Happiness. There are then short methodological sections from the Office of National statistics and OECD. The report opens with a commentary on the state of the world with stark contradictions between technical sophistication and the fact that nearly one billion people do not have enough to eat; moreover, we are destroying the environmental resource base on which economic growth ultimately depends, and population is expected to reach more than 9 billion by 2050, with most of the increase coming in developing countries. Affluence creates its own problems in terms of health, addictions and anxiety. Western economics, which supports the logic of pursuing ever-higher GNP, assumes an understanding of humanity that is at variance with the wisdom of the ages as well as the research of psychologists. We do not live by bread alone, but thrive on cooperation, trust and community.

The science of happiness distinguishes between two measurements: affective happiness representing daily emotions and mood, and evaluative happiness as an indication of overall life satisfaction. The editors point out that the context of the current quest for happiness is one of growing environmental risks, when we may need increased resilience in order to thrive. This means that policies will also take account of environmental sustainability, social inclusion and good governance. The case for taking happiness seriously is based on the conviction that it can provide a range of possibilities for creating a better world; overall evaluations seem to take into account both pleasure and purpose represented respectively in the hedonistic and eudaemonistic lives, the latter focused on achieving excellence. The international charts make fascinating reading and give some indication of the relative quality of individual and community life within a particular geographic zone. The overall indicators on the scale of 0 to 10 are evenly distributed, but skewed towards the upper end in more developed countries, peaking at 8/10. Although there are some variations depending on the particular study in question, similar countries appear at the top of the scale, such as Denmark, Costa Rica, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden and New Zealand. It is interesting that Ireland appears at the top of the chart for average affective happiness yesterday and average positive affect, while Sweden and Norway are much further down that particular chart. This suggests variations in national temperament. The analysis of the causes of happiness and misery takes into account genes and environment, external features such as income, work, values and religion, and more personal features including mental and physical health, family experience, education gender and age. Notable by its absence is attitude, which is surely a key personal factor. Abraham Lincoln famously said that most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds degree. There are analyses of individual happiness and income, the role of work, social capital in terms of trust, freedom and equality, values and religion including altruism and consumerism; then considerations involving mental and physical health, family, education, gender and age as mentioned above. The conclusion is that happiness depends on a huge range of factors, and that many of these can be influenced by government policy, which is considered in the next section. This falls under the headings referred to above and provides a different lens for thinking through social implications. The bulk of the second part covers Bhutan and its experience over the last 40 years of a gross national happiness index. About 40% of the population consider themselves happy, of whom 8.3% are 'deeply happy' and 32.6% 'extensively happy.' Only 10.4% report themselves as unhappy, leaving 48.7% as 'narrowly happy.' The philosophical basis of GNH is that beneficial development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occurs concurrently. There are nine domains of GNH with a total of 33 indicators with relative weightings; the domains are psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience and living standards. This is all explained in considerable detail, which gives the reader an in-depth understanding of the sophistication of the scheme and points up the biggest deprivations, which currently relate to education, living standards and time use. The King himself describes GNH as development with values, and there is much to be learned from this experience. Readers of this important report will realise that the issues and policy implications are very real and deserve to be applied more widely.