There’s been much talk recently of operationalizing & measuring “happiness” around the world, as a way to look beyond GDP, HDI, and other measures of social well-being. This is the new “happiness economics.” This week’s Economist had another feature on two surveys (one by Gallup, the other by Ipsos) that looked at people’s happiness around the world. But there’s even a Happy Planet Index (HPI) website, which looks at environmental factors (basically, not how happy people are, but how happy the planet is about such people). No surprise, in most of these, Bolivia doesn’t fare well.
By HPI, Bolivia scores “1 good & 2 med” (yellow), placing it the low end. Only Colombia & Guyana do better (“2 good & 1 med”); Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay do worse (“3 med”). For perspective, the US & Canada, Europe, Russia, India, and others do very poorly (if not downright in the red). But some of these look odd. Europe scores in the second-worst categories, but China scores two notches up. So India (a rapidly industrializing country) is treated just like Europe, but China (a rapidly industrializing country) is not?
The Gallop measure is based on a poll of people’s attitudes. Here, Bolivia scores near the bottom. In this poll, people are happiest in North America, Europe, Australia, Brazil, and a few others. The world’s happiest country is Finland; Africa is the world’s least happy continent. Interestingly, a country’s wealth is strongly correlated to its happiness—but only when comparing between very rich & very poor countries. People in poor countries are, understandably, miserable. People in rich countries are rather satisfied w/ their lives. But, as the researchers argue, while the difference between $1,000, $10,000, and $19,000 is the same (in absolute figures), the impact on happiness diminishes (people w/ $19,000 aren’t twice as happy as people w/ $10,000, but the latter are much happier than those w/ only $1,000).
But, still, I can’t help but get back to the HPI index and its figures for Bolivia (and a few others). At first glance, it seems they’re correlating wealth w/ an unhappy planet. But Africa is red all over. So how are these things measured? The formula suggests three major factors: life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint. Since the measure for life satisfaction is based on a poll, these numbers should be similar to the Gallup & Ipsos figures. And life expectancy should be simple enough to measure. But, if this is the case, then Europe should do better than Bolivia (higher life expectancies & better “happiness” scores in surveys). So is the deciding factor ecological? If so, I dare say that researchers haven’t traveled extensively in Latin America.
Defining "happiness" in materialistic terms? You would think that they would know better than that. There is useful information contained in those polls, but they are hurt by their stupid titles.
And yes, it would seem that the researchers haven't traveled extensively. In my experience, some of the happiest people I have met lived in what is "poverty" by American standards, while many rich Americans and Europeans can't survive from week to week without extensive medication and visits to their shrink.
Perhaps they could conduct another poll that measures happiness in terms of human relationships (and more specifically, family ties), and cheerfulness and optimism in the face of adversity.
Actually, they (Gallup & Ipsos) are not measuring happiness in purely materialistic terms, but only that they do seem to correlate w/ overall material well-being. That is: people living on $1/day are relatively unhappy; people living on $50/day are happier; people living on $200/day are happy, but not that much happier than people living on $100/day. Does that make sense?
As for travelling extensively ... that quip was aimed at the HPI people. Personal litter, industrial pollution, land degradation, and other "ecological" indicators are huge problems in Bolivia (and elsewhere in Latin America). So I wonder how the HPI index calculates "ecological footprint" indicators.
But, yes, there is a lot of debate over the new "happiness economics" and how it's measured. But many of these researchers are arguing that being "rich" doesn't necessarily make one happy. And here I think Frank's point is actually compatible w/ the happiness economics indicators. Very poor people in Bolivia are unhappy (otherwise, how would one explain October 2003 or April 2000?); but middle class people in Bolivia may be just as happy (if not happier) than middle class people in the US (even though they are less "rich" by material standards).
So the question is about relative material well-being. Someone living in an inner city slum in Los Angeles is probably rather miserable, but someone like Paris Hilton may not necessarily be much "happier" (despite all her family's millions) than someone living on $50,000 a year in the midwest.