Brits Monitor The Country’s Happiness

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So it’s official. Stiff-upper-lip-Brits have gone all touchy-feely. Today the Guardian Newspaper reported that “The UK government is poised to start measuring people’s psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness.”

On this dull, dark afternoon in London, we UK-based Newsfeeders can’t imagine that the survey will find the Brits in the throes of estactic jubilation. While some nationalities run hot and cold, the Brits do tepid better than any other tribe; they seem to have the emotional constitution of a used tea bag.  You should see the way they flinch when we Americans end conversations with “have a nice day.” Of course, this equanimity proves useful in times of adversity; “Keep Calm and Carry On” was a motto that got the Brits through the Blitz and has reappeared during the current economic downturn. So why suddenly the obsession with happiness?

It turns out there is a pretty good reason.  Britain has finally caught on to the fact that the traditional measure of a country’s well-being–GDP—is woefully inadequate. Measuring the market value of all goods and services produced in an economy has several statistical flaws: it ignores unpaid work that might benefit society, like raising children, while including societal failures; the cost of keeping 2 million people in prison boosts the U.S.’s GDP, as does fuel sales, despite the correlation with traffic congestion and pollution.

But most importantly a GDP fetish ignores the fact that a developed society’s accumulation of wealth does not improve the life satisfaction of its citizens. Numerous surveys show that despite the steady economic growth of developed countries over the past 50 years, those nations’ citizens are no more satisfied than they were 50 years ago, and only slightly healthier.

(Click here to learn more about surveys measuring life satisfaction)

Last year, a panel chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen released a report on behalf of the French government calling for governments to form new measurements of economic vitality that account for factors other than growth. It’s this report that inspired the British government to attempt to start measuring the life satisfaction of its citizens. According to the Guardian, British households will receive a questionnaire next spring asking them to rate their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their “life goals”.

(Click here to learn more about the panel’s work)

So we at Newsfeed applaud the Brits for having the courage to slow down and ask themselves if they are happy. In our hectic, face-paced lives, we Americans too often mistake cheeriness for happiness. Turns out it is the gloomy Brits, of all people, who may have something to teach us about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.