Chapter Seven: The Rise of Wellbeing Economics

Jules,

I attended the Young Leaders’ Conference in Bath last week and thoroughly enjoyed your talk; however I didn’t get a chance to ask a question. I agree that one’s wellbeing is no longer measured only using economic indicators but other measures also; you talked of the Happiness Index etc. My questions are: All of these new statistics are fairly recent. What do you think are the major factors of people starting to ‘take note’ and attempt to devise other methods in order to truly understand what influences a person’s wellbeing? Do you think there is a clear correlation between a country’s development and wellbeing or not (Vanuatu springs to mind as a clear anomaly)?

Many thanks.

Indea

Thanks for getting in touch. There are stats going back many years on subjective and objective wellbeing which have been collected often by Governments in countris like the US, UK, Germany etc. I thin the interest in digging into these issues comes from a realisation by economists, psychologists and accademics that are current economic paradigm is so clearly not delivering wellbeing to humans. This echoes a similar realistion which has been ongoing since at least the 60′s in Ecological Economics that likewise this paradigm serves to ignore and devastate the wellbeing of the natural environment. Bring these two sets of enquiry together and you have the emerging enquiry into Wellbeing Economics, updates to capitalism and questions aroun what progress actually menas and how to measure and set policy to deliver such progress for maximisation of wellbeing for people (current and future) and planet. So questions like ‘what best delivers maximium long happy lives with least footprint’ become both crucial and possible.

If you would like to dig deaper read some of Lord Layard’s work or books on our reading list. Its I think the most fascinating philosophical and moral enquiry of our time – and of course crucial to us getting much more time….the clock is ticking faster and faster…and running out of life.

Whether there is a clear correlation between a country’s development and wellbeing or not? Well it depends what you measure as ‘development’ – if its money, wealth, cars etc then evidence says no. If its quality of relationships, trust etc etc then yes. Its a new field and much more work is needed but things like the Happy Planet Index have not to my knowledge been questioned or rebutted with any good explanations as to why they show ‘less-developed’ countries doing so much better than some far more ‘developed ones’.

Jules

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