On the UN Day of Happiness, should happiness economics, wellbeing and quality of life become key determinants of policy?
Happiness economics is a new field that strives to find out what really makes people happy based on surveys asking citizens: "How satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?" or "How happy are you?". Rather than letting experts define what makes for the good life from an armchair perspective, happiness economics allows us to identify the factors that matter for people's wellbeing as they themselves experience it.
When the original millenium development goals (MDGs) were formulated, happiness economics barely existed. Before 2000, less than five scientific articles a year dealt with "subjective wellbeing", academic speak for happiness and life satisfaction. Over the course of the past decade, though, their number has risen enormously. A World Happiness Report launched last year at the United Nations summarises the evidence to date.
The influential Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission (pdf), which inspired a number of national initiatives around the globe to redefine our understanding of progress (pdf) concluded in 2009 that indicators of subjective wellbeing hold the promise of delivering not just a good measure of quality of life per se, but also a better understanding of its determinants.
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