Happiness is a child with a popsicle
By Petra Pinzler
The conventional focus of development policy is on economic growth,
but how would it be if "happiness" were the goal?
Bigger, faster, more. Western people are on a mission to become more
affluent, with bigger cars, faster computers, more glamorous clothes.
The economy must grow, so that everyone gets more money. Western
culture is about maximising consumption, and this formula is being
copied elsewhere.
What really matters
But should that really be so? If one takes a closer look, there are
two reasons to distrust this doctrine. First of all, it has been obvious
for quite some time that the growth rates in the western world cannot be
sustained in the long run. Sustainability in any sense of the word is
still a long way off, despite many achievements in environmental
protection. The west is using too much of the world's resources, and
various technical and legal innovations have hardly changed matters.
Given that the Earth is finite, growth cannot continue indefinitely.
From an ecological perspective, humankind is virtually heading into
economic ruin.
The West's so-called "success" is on shaky ground. If everyone
followed its lead, environmental meltdown would only occur faster.
The second reason is not quite as obvious, but nonetheless slowly
trickling into general awareness: despite growth in recent decades,
advanced nations have experienced little improvement in the quality of
life. Many studies and surveys consistently conclude that, in material
terms, the West is indeed becoming richer, but its people are not
becoming any happier. Indeed, the West is growing poorer in
environmental terms, without making people's lives more fulfilled.
This trend makes the supposed success story a lot less attractive.
But what is the alternative? An interesting debate has recently begun
among experts from around the world on this very issue. How can
societies develop in a way to allow their citizens to have a "good life"
and, at the same time, preserve the environment? What are the
appropriate criteria for an improved quality of life? How are they
measured?
Catherine Austin Fitts, the president of the investment company
Solari, uses a child's smile to measure quality of life. A warm summer's
day, a bright-eyed face, an ice cream cone. Clichés about happiness are
easy to find; and this is certainly one. But in Fitts' eyes it is more.
She invented the "popsicle index", named after very popular frozen treat
in the USA. To assess the quality of life, Fitts asks people whether it
is safe for a child in their neighbourhood to go out and buy a popsicle
on its own. The index registers the share of people who say yes in any
given area, because this is a relevant indicator for the quality of
life.
The popsicle index is a gimmick in a way, but there is a serious
element at its core. Several things about an area have to add up for a
child to be able to go out and buy sweets. There must be a shop. It must
be possible to walk there without being run over. The area must be safe,
and families must be able to afford to live there in the first place. So
a mere popsicle can indeed lead to some relevant insights.
Happiness
Just as there are good and bad neighbourhoods, the degree of
happiness varies from one nation to another. The quality of life depends
on a sense of well-being, or what the ancient Greeks long ago called the
"good life".
It does not simply depend on chance or genes. There are measurable
basic requirements running through all communities: a certain level of
prosperity is essential, but this level is lower than normally assumed.
Other relevant aspects include opportunities, education, health,
security and a healthy environment. The quality of life, moreover, also
depends on distributional justice. More equal societies evidently tend
to be happier than very unequal ones. Accordingly, public policy plays a
much greater role in happiness than is generally believed. Anglo-Saxon
countries in particular have seen the development of a new branch of
research in recent decades. It is known as "happiness economics", the
economic research into happiness or quality of life. This academic
discipline identifies the basic conditions needed for well-being.
Surveys and comparisons between countries are becoming more
sophisticated, so researchers are now closer to identifying the factors
that really determine contentment. For example, the World Values Survey
has been investigating the level of well-being experienced by people in
different countries since the early 1980s.
Its findings are particularly sobering for Western nations that
consider themselves role models for poor countries. In most
industrialised nations, people today are no more satisfied with their
lives than their parents were.
It does not matter that economies have been growing strongly for
decades. In purely material terms, people are better off today, but
nonetheless, the levels of happiness in Britain, Belgium, Austria and
Germany are actually falling.
In contrast, satisfaction with life has increased in many developing
countries, and that is easy to explain. Many of these countries were
still extremely poor in quite recent times, but their economies have
been growing fast.
When national incomes rise from almost nothing to a little, citizens
become more satisfied with their lives. That is even the case in places
where wealth is distributed unequally and glaring unfairness persists.
When a poor economy expands, a little prosperity trickles down, so more
people have money to pay for food, new clothes and doctor's visits.
Unsurprisingly, their attitude towards life improves.
Some more growth will further increase happiness - up to the point
where a certain level of prosperity is reached. From then on, the rule
no longer applies.
Once people can fulfil their essential needs, an economic miracle
does not automatically make them more satisfied. From a certain level of
prosperity upwards, other things start to become more important,
including security, freedom and environmental protection.
Policy implications
In the past, policymakers tended to defer to the global consensus,
namely, that the more an economy grows, the better. Today, to avoid
varying degrees of embarrassment, they almost always qualify this
approach with "sustainably". Nonetheless, countries' success is still
measured in growth rates, even though it is well understood that this
approach does not make much sense.
A rise in gross domestic product (GDP) only means that business sales
are increasing because more goods are manufactured, sold and used. GDP
gives no indication about life in a country.
It is blind when it comes to distribution. It neither reveals whether
an economy is solid or vulnerable to crisis, nor does it tell us
anything about whether a country is developing in the right direction or
is merely exploiting people and natural resources ruthlessly.
GDP statistics even count the destruction of the environment as a
gain - for instance, when forests are cut down for timber.
Most experts are of course aware of these snags, but what
alternatives to growth strategies can they recommend? In the past,
governments used growth rates in the same way that a drowning person
uses a lifebelt - there was no alternative.
In 2009, however, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress tried to formulate one.
The Commission was led by people who are experts in thinking outside
the box: Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen,
and prominent French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi.
They recommended nothing less than the introduction of new
statistical instruments to measure the well-being of nations. They
argued that the time had come to move on from merely measuring economic
output to measuring people's well-being.
In their view, attempting to manage an economy and a society by
relying on GDP data was like trying to stay a course "without a reliable
compass".
- Third World Network Features
|