Making gross national happiness indexes objective

Gross domestic product or gross national happiness? What should governments be striving for, and how?

Governments should strive for gross national happiness, because it is the government’s task to take care of the citizens: Citizens give up a part of their freedom so that the government can provide a safe and stable environment for everyone in the country. Obviously well-being consists of more than money, as we saw today during the practical. Great to hear all the experiences and ideas, truly inspiring!

Gross domestic product is a clearly defined measure that makes it easy to compare countries. But it excludes all kind of measures that greatly contribute to well-being, although I don’t think GDP originally was meant as an overall measure to compare well-being. It was an indicator for life standard, not an absolute measure for well-being. GDP is an indicator for consumption in a country, and since we can expect an optimal consumption rate (see Tim Jackson’s article for this week) maybe an optimal GDP can be measured. Just as a transition to another proxy for welfare...

By the way, why are we comparing GDP’s? Why do we want to know how much money we make compared to other countries? I’m sure the MBA students have an answer to that...

Anyway, the definition of well-being differs per country. Every culture defines happiness differently. Even within nations these differences can be found, just thinking about a discussion I had yesterday about different lifestyles of urban people and country people. Also the definition of well-being evolves continuously. At the moment prosperity in western cultures is having loads of material stuff, but in some countries having much food and growing fat is prosperity, and surely there are more examples. In western society a health trend has been going on for years already, maybe being healthy is the most important signal of welfare in some time...

Getting back to my first statement that governments should take care of the citizens, it is not enough to know how much inhabitants consume, they should also know if they feel good. But is it possible to develop a well-being index that can replace the GDP? Well-being values may be hard to measure as it comprises both objective and subjective indicators. Maybe it is possible to find objective indicators to add to the subjective ones.

Just doing a brainstorm on things that are important for people and try to put some objective indicators on it:
- Health; average age, number of diseased per 1000 inhabitants (could pick a mix of typical diseases related to poverty and welfare to see if there is too much or too little to consume)
- Safety; crime numbers like number of murders, robberies, etc. related to number of inhabitants
- Sufficient food and drinks; suppose one could add the value of all food/drinks sold and divide it by number of inhabitants, but that wouldn’t include subsistence farming which is still big in many countries. Relative price of a bread, or a couple of more or less similar basic products that are used all over the world?
- Friends and family; Seems really difficult to measure objectively...Hours per year spend on caring for friends and family? Hours or number of events spend with friends and family for leisure?
- Recognition and acceptance by community/ society; Engagement in political parties, hours of voluntary work per year
Feel free to brainstorm along :-)