Bigger economy, more happiness?

The US should think about a general wellness index alongside GDP to gauge the country8217;s health

A quick quiz. What do the following have in common? The war in Iraq. Sales of cigarettes. The recent fires in Southern California. The answer: They all contribute to our nation8217;s gross domestic product, or GDP, and therefore are all considered 8220;good,8221; at least in the dismal eyes of economists.

GDP is the sum of all goods and services a nation produces over a given time. GDP measures the size of the pie, not the quality of the ingredients 8212; fresh apples or rotten ones are counted the same8230; GDP doesn8217;t register, as Robert Kennedy put it, 8220;the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate.8221; GDP measures everything, Kennedy concluded, 8220;except that which makes life worthwhile.8221;

Yet we continue to track this quarterly statistic as if nothing else matters. If GDP is up, we feel good. It means we as a nation are doing better and are, presumably, happier. Low rates of growth or, God forbid, a shrinking economy mean we are less well off and, presumably, less happy.

However, recent research into happiness 8212; or subjective well-being, as social scientists call it 8212; reveals that beyond the surprisingly low level of about 15,000 a year, the link between economic growth and happiness evaporates.

Americans are three times wealthier than we were half a century ago, but we are no happier. The same is true of Japan and many other industrialized nations. Yet we continue to treat economic growth and well-being as one and the same.

But one country does not. Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan nation, has invented a radically new metric: Gross National Happiness.

It8217;s not a joke, and these mountain people are not oxygen-deprived. Bhutan, sandwiched between India and China, is serious about pursuing a different kind of development, one that, in the words of the late economist E. F. Schumacher, treats 8220;economics as if people mattered.8221;

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Others have toyed with alternative measures of national progress, but none have gone as far as Bhutan8217;s happiness policy. The country8217;s home minister, Jigmi Y. Thinley, calls conventional measures of economic growth 8220;delusional.8221; Instead, Bhutanese officials make decisions based, in part, on whether they will contribute to the nation8217;s collective happiness8230;

Excerpted from 8216;The LA Times8217;, November 13