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.
