THE events that are happening in our country over the past few weeks are very disturbing: the ongoing terroristic acts by the Maute group in Marawi City; the declaration of martial law in Mindanao; attacks by New People’s Army leftist rebels in Bohol, Quezon, Samar, etc.; and, the ongoing aggressive war versus drugs.
Let us not forget the equally disturbing events happening around the world: the ongoing war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, parts of Africa, and many more; the terror attacks in other parts of the Middle East, major cities in Europe, Africa and Asia.
These claimed a lot of lives of many soldiers and policemen, terrorists and rebels, and humanitarian volunteers and citizens, essentially humans from all sides of this conflict.
So if you are asked today, are you happy? What would be your answer?
I expect your answer to be, “NO!” With all these happening, how can one be happy? However, if I were asked as an economist, “are you happy?”
There are many misconceptions on the way economists (and businessmen) would define happiness. People perceive that the only source of happiness of economists (and businessmen) is from money.
Recently, when a friend and I were talking about happiness in Economics, his immediate reaction was that money is happiness for economists. For which, I courteously laughed, and changed the topic of our conversation. I thought I could explain the Economics of Happiness more clearly through this medium.
Happiness Economics is one of the newest field of Economics which studies the relationship between the individual satisfaction and economic issues like employment and wealth. The economics of happiness seeks to relate economic decisions to a wider range of factors affecting well-being, quality of life and self-reported levels of happiness.
Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index is an alternative perspective of development. This concept was inspired by the former King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck back in 1971.
This approach measures prosperity which include nine domains, namely: psychological well-being, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards.
Moving forward, in 2012, this measure of development was formalized with the publication of the World Happiness Report (WHR), supporting the United Nations’ High Level meeting on happiness and well-being.
Happiness is now considered to be a proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy using variables that shall not only include the nine social domains, mentioned earlier, and summarized into these three categories, health life expectancy, corruption levels and social freedoms, but also take into consideration the GDP per capital, as a measure of quality of life.
The WHR of 2017 was released last March 20, which is also considered as the World Happiness Day.
Norway is the happiest country around the world in 2017, replacing Denmark, which ranked second this year. They ranked fourth last year. Taking the third and the fourth spot are Iceland and Switzerland, respectively.
All the top four countries ranked highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income, and good governance.
GNH is basically a measure of social and economic progress where the social foundations of happiness are emphasized. We can compare the life experiences of the top 10 countries with the bottom 10 countries in the annual rankings.
The variables are grouped into two, having equal weights. The first group of variables, which include generosity, a sense of freedom, and freedom from corruption. The second group of variables are GDP per capita and health life expectancy.
The difference of the weights of both groups of variables, explained in a four-point happiness gap. The conclusions derived from the analysis of the gap is important bring social context to the index.
This index provides a rich basis for policies for the social and economic aspects of the country. However, it is to be emphasized that there is great value for the individual person that are included in the GNH.
On the individual level, the comparison of the top 10 and bottom 10 countries is also very important. For the richer countries, differences of happiness of the populace can be explained through the differences in mental health, physical health and personal relationships. The single source of misery in these countries is mental illness.
For the poorer countries, income gap among the citizens is a matter of much importance for them, however, mental illness is also a major source of misery. Therefore, for the poorer countries, aside from unhappiness from the differences in income, they are also prone to illnesses, both physical and mental. Work is a major factor affecting happiness, that an unemployment in the household can be cause of a fall in happiness.
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For the second part, let us focus on individual happiness in detail.