Improving government by focusing on well-being and happiness

This post is written by Dr Keegan McBride, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance and a non-resident research fellow at the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government.

• The problem: Traditional measures of wealth and development focus too much on income and economic growth, but ignore the importance of societal well-being and happiness.

• Why it matters: One core goal of government should be to improve the quality of life, well-being, and happiness for its citizens and residents and provide an environment for their lives to flourish.

• The solution: Rethinking how we measure development by integrating societal well-being and happiness into government.

"With the creation and adoption of wealth and economic development indicators such as Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product, the focus of government has become slightly misaligned."

A core function of government should be the development and maintenance of happiness and well-being for its citizens and residents. In order to accomplish this, societal well-being (SWB) and happiness must be measured. Though important, the measurement of happiness and well-being is not a commonly monitored indicator by governments.

This is unfortunate and somewhat surprising.

The idea that happiness and well-being are important to the state government is not new. Aristotle, in his work “Nicomachean Ethics”, discusses the idea of eudaimonia (happiness or well-being) and argues that the development of happiness is, in fact, the goal of the state, and, therefore, the study of politics is really about the study of developing happiness.

Unfortunately, with the creation and adoption of wealth and economic development indicators such as Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product, the focus of government has become slightly misaligned with an overemphasis on economic aspects and an underemphasis on well-being and happiness.

Put simply, there is more to life than economic consumption and development. While there is some relationship between income and well-being, the Easterlin paradox shows us that, over the long run, there is a diminishing return on economic gains – at some point higher income does not lead to increased happiness and well-being.

How to fix the issue

As societal well-being and happiness matter, they must be measured, monitored, and included as key indicators within the development and implementation of policy and government strategy. This view is becoming increasingly prominent amongst economists who study “happiness economics”, in academic articles, such as “A Happy Choice: Well-being as the Goal of Government” by Frijters et al., or in reports such as the World Happiness Report.

This distinction between the emphasis on traditional economic indicators, the missing emphasis on well-being and happiness, and what is lost as a result of this misconfiguration was well articulated by then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 speech at the University of Kansas.

“Gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their place… it does not include the beauty of our poetry, [and] it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

Measuring happiness

So, what exactly are well-being and happiness, and how can they be measured?

While there are a number of different approaches and understandings, well-being i_s_ the subjective global assessment of one’s life, encompassing their experienced reality, negative, and positive experiences. Happiness is one part of this. Most people will be able to tell you if they are happy or not when asked. However, well-being and happiness are not directly synonyms and new definitions of well-being are often holistic, taking into account a number of variables such as their work-life balance, health status, environment status (closeness to greenery, air pollution, etc.), relationship status, feeling of safety, or level of education.

One of the best-known approaches for measuring happiness and well-being comes from Bhutan with the creation of their Gross National Happiness programme. In the governments of Scotland, Finland, Iceland, Wales, and New Zealand, a new programme, known as the “Well-being Economy Governments (WEGo)” which describes itself as “a global movement [that] is coalescing among a large number of individuals and organizations around the need to shift economies to one broadly focused on ‘sustainable well-being’”, has been created.

Within this cooperation, the government of New Zealand has created the living standards framework, which consists of 12 domains of well-being and focuses on four capitals: natural capital, social capital, human capital, and financial and physical capital. In order to drive and support well-being, they have drafted the well-being budget, which focuses on areas of well-being that are underperforming.

Similar to New Zealand, Scotland has created the National Performance Framework, which focuses on 11 national outcomes such as environment, children and young people, culture and communities.

"Making well-being and happiness measurable policy goals is necessary and important."

Who else is doing it right?

Other countries such as Canada, Norway, and Wales are also now beginning to adopt similar policy strategies that look into a future that moves beyond GDP and reorients governmental focus towards the fostering and development of happiness and well-being.

Such developments are similar to what the OECD has created in their “better life index”, which is made up of 11 dimensions such as subjective well-being, health, housing, and environmental quality that, together, enable an understanding of both well-being and happiness of a given country.

Making well-being and happiness measurable policy goals is necessary and important. Levels of both can, for example, influence support and trust in government, influence life expectancy, quality of life, and provide valuable insight into the current state and feeling of society.

By integrating well-being and happiness into government, making them an actionable policy goal, and using them to augment other measures of development, governments have the ability to improve their effectiveness. However, in order to do this, governments must be able to clearly measure and track both SWB and happiness.

While there are currently many ways to do this, by looking at the approaches utilised by the WEGo countries, the OECD, and taking stock of insights from the field of happiness economics, it is already possible to make steps in the right direction.

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