World Economy And Happiness

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There is a small state in the Himalayas - the Kingdom of Bhutan (not to be confused with the hydrocarbon of the same name). Its king, Jigme Xinghai Wangchuck, in his throne speech to the National Assembly in 1972, stated that the country's welfare should be measured not by its gross domestic product (GDP), but by its gross domestic happiness (BBC). Much has changed in Bhutan since then, but the Prime Minister, as it has been since 1972, in his annual report on the state of the nation highlights the state of affairs with the four "pillars of the Air Force." These in the kingdom are: ensuring fair and sustainable socio-economic development, preserving and developing traditional cultural values, nature conservation and proper governance of the country.

More and more psychologists and economists are finding a lot of meaning in this unconventional indicator of the country's development. Indicators such as GDP or less frequently used aggregate social product do not take into account many of the values produced in the country or, conversely, lost by it. These are, for example, the cost of unpaid work of volunteers (like our social work or subbotniks of the Soviet era), the cost of health that people accumulate during a properly spent vacation, economic losses associated with environmental degradation. A happy, contented person works better than an unhappy person, so the non-economic indicator clearly affects the economy.

American psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman believe that the main goal of politicians should be to improve the welfare of citizens, and success in this area should be measured by three indicators: GDP, education and health care levels in the country, and such a subjective indicator as the level of satisfaction with life. As these experts emphasize, since 1945, the American GDP per capita has tripled, but opinion polls show that the "level of happiness" of the population has remained approximately the same, or rather even dropped slightly. The same is the case in other countries of the Western world. However, in Denmark, for example, the number of people satisfied with their lives has increased over the past 30 years, and the reasons for this are unclear.

Diener believes that it would be good to establish constant monitoring of the "level of happiness" in the country in a way similar to how it is done to measure the rating of TV programs. It is necessary to select a certain number of families in different sectors of society and ask their members to regularly register their mood. Diener realizes that such an ongoing survey will cost a lot of money, but it will cost significantly less than the regular calculation of economic indicators. The psychologist does not think that the BBC can or should replace GDP as the main indicator of the country's progress, but he hopes that soon BBC figures will be published along with data on the rise and fall of stocks. Dutch psychologist Ruut Venhoven, editor of the international Journal of Happiness Research, has developed a generalized measure of satisfaction with life in a particular country. Its metric is called Happy Years, and it combines data on life expectancy with life satisfaction. So, in Canada, the average life expectancy is 78.6 years, and the average level of satisfaction with life (quite a subjective indicator measured in surveys on a conventional scale) is 0.763 points. Wenhoven multiplies them, it turns out 60 "happy years". A similar calculation for the United States gives 57 years, for Holland - 59, India - 39. Russia (29 "happy years") lags slightly behind South Africa (30, 8) and Nigeria (32, 7) in this indicator.

The British government also became interested in non-economic indicators of development. In 2003, the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat held a series of seminars on life satisfaction, and the Prime Minister's administration recommended that when choosing the path of reforms in health care and education, stop at the option that will give the largest increase in this indicator.

Of course, as Arkady Gaidar noted, what happiness is - everyone understands in his own way. Indeed, Ruut Wenhoven counted 15 scientific definitions of this concept. And satisfaction with life is not the same as feeling happy. In surveys that are regularly conducted around the world, people are asked two questions: how happy are you now, and how highly do you rate your overall success in life? In some countries, overall life satisfaction is low and there are many happy people. This is usually typical of developing countries, where the situation is now improving, and against this background, the past life seems to the respondents to be especially unfortunate. Thus, Nigeria ranks first in the world in terms of the number of very happy people, and in terms of the degree of satisfaction with life, it is closer to the average indicators throughout the world.

The links between life satisfaction and well-being are also unclear. Residents of wealthy, industrialized Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, are subjectively less satisfied with their lives than their incomes would suggest. But many residents of the United States and some other Western countries often feel happier than their material well-being would seem to allow.

Different civilizations have different attitudes towards happiness and a sense of contentment. In Western countries, with their generally accepted individualism, these feelings are often viewed as a measure of personal success. Being unhappy means that you are a failure, you have not been able to properly manage your life and the opportunities that the world around you provides. That is why Americans are always asked "how are you?" answer cheerful "great!", and only a loved one, and even then not always, can tell about how their affairs really are. Approximately the same attitude towards happiness and in Latin American countries. Psychologists believe that this feature often overestimates the number of happy people in surveys. However, in some places luck, success, satisfaction with life are considered even something not quite decent, and to the question "how are you?" people prefer to answer "yes so, little by little", or even begin to complain about life. In such countries, the percentage of happy in surveys is lower than the real one.

In countries where collectivism is more valued, for example, in China, Japan, South Korea (in the North, such polls were not conducted - 100% of the population are deliberately happy there), people relate to happiness with a high degree of fatalism. It is generally accepted there that heaven sends happiness. According to the Korean psychologist Yunkuk Su, this frees people from feelings of inferiority or guilt for not being very happy. If the gods give happiness, then you may well be a worthy and wonderful person in all respects, you just have no luck yet.