Can happiness be measured?
In this article, which is a debate between Richard Layard champion of the Government’s new happiness index and philosopher Julian Bagginni, Layard sets out the policy context, relevant amongst other public bodies, to local authorities. He tells us:
“My belief is that the best state of society is the one where there is the most happiness and the least misery. And if we think happiness is what policymakers should aim for, it is critical to measure it. If you go back 30 or 40 years, people said you couldn’t measure depression. But eventually the measurement of depression became uncontroversial. I think the same will happen with happiness. We’re at an early stage, but I don’t see how you can argue this isn’t a scientific project.”
To read more about the happiness index follow this link to an earlier Guardian story. There has been a debate about measuring happiness and well-being in terms of public sector impact for a number of years. Regional Development Agencies were advocates of the Index of Sustainable Well-Being as a “softer” approach to measuring their impact than simple economic growth. This link on the South West Observatory website provides more information. We ourselves did some work for the Commission for Rural Communities on rural economic well being, you can view it here.
Why is well being/ happiness important? The old days of having to measure lots of inputs and outputs are behind us. The challenge of identifying the difference we are making however remains. If we are going to “measure what matters” going forward I wonder if this might not be a good place to start?