Bhutan was the first country to implement an economy dedicated to boosting people's wellbeing. Economies with a similar emphasis are gaining traction across the world.
I agree that attempting to maximise happiness is far better than trying to maximise GDP.
However, GDP and Happiness Indexes measure different things and are therefore not really comparable.
Moreover:
• GDP is an objective measure of the total monetary value of output of the formal economy. However, it is an incomplete measure. As stated, GDP excludes unpaid work. It also excludes the informal economy. Thus, the example of drug deals is not believable – for obvious reasons, dealers in illegal drugs do not report their earnings to any financial authority.
• Since GDP excludes the informal economy, in countries like South Africa, with a large informal sector GDP numbers can be very misleading.
• Happiness indexes are subjective measures of people’s perceptions. They are produced from surveys of a sample of the population. That makes them prone to error and they can easily be manipulated to give whatever result is desired by whoever is doing the survey.
Thank you for your comment. We agree with most of your points and that GDP and wellbeing are not comparable. I think the main issue there is that GDP is the god of economic progress at the expense of wellbeing for many (and on macro issues like the climate, for us all).
Also, we gather that before setting up a Wellbeing Economy, extensive consultation with public generally happens to establish what the most important criteria for wellbeing should be for a country in particular, and these are aims that can be measurable by economists/social scientists: educational outcomes, employment rates, morbidity etc. Does that make sense?
Please add anything you would like to, as we hope to write more stories about this in the future.
I agree that attempting to maximise happiness is far better than trying to maximise GDP.
However, GDP and Happiness Indexes measure different things and are therefore not really comparable.
Moreover:
• GDP is an objective measure of the total monetary value of output of the formal economy. However, it is an incomplete measure. As stated, GDP excludes unpaid work. It also excludes the informal economy. Thus, the example of drug deals is not believable – for obvious reasons, dealers in illegal drugs do not report their earnings to any financial authority.
• Since GDP excludes the informal economy, in countries like South Africa, with a large informal sector GDP numbers can be very misleading.
• Happiness indexes are subjective measures of people’s perceptions. They are produced from surveys of a sample of the population. That makes them prone to error and they can easily be manipulated to give whatever result is desired by whoever is doing the survey.
Mark
Hi Mark
Thank you for your comment. We agree with most of your points and that GDP and wellbeing are not comparable. I think the main issue there is that GDP is the god of economic progress at the expense of wellbeing for many (and on macro issues like the climate, for us all).
Also, we gather that before setting up a Wellbeing Economy, extensive consultation with public generally happens to establish what the most important criteria for wellbeing should be for a country in particular, and these are aims that can be measurable by economists/social scientists: educational outcomes, employment rates, morbidity etc. Does that make sense?
Please add anything you would like to, as we hope to write more stories about this in the future.