[stratomaster136]

I am currently researching for an economics paper entitled 'How Could the Pursuit of Gross National Happiness Best be Translated Into Economic Policy', and am (of course) finding GNH challenging to define exactly.

I am therefore garnering different opinions as to how GNH should be defined.


Please could you give me your opinions as to:

How GNH should be defined?

Which economic criteria would you measure it by?

How would you use economic policy to promote it?


Thanks...

[Sharpnel]

tbh id say its hard to measure since england has alot of scumbags sitting around leeching off benefits and buying demerit goods such as cigs, drugs and alcohol

(Original post by wiki)
A second-generation GNH concept, treating happiness as a socioeconomic development metric, was proposed in 2006 by Med Yones, the President of International Institute of Management. The metric measures socioeconomic development by tracking 7 development area including the nation's mental and emotional health.[2] GNH value is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of the following measures:

Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution

Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic

Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses

Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients

Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics such as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits

Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates

Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.

the people who dont contribute at all to society racking up huge debts binging off benefits etc probably offset the averages quite a bit. Similarly people on the top part of the wage band might influence the averages differently, so it would be difficult to measure a true GNH.



i dont really know much about the concept of gross national happiness though, wiki has alot of info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness