Ways Happiness Has Been Measured Already

The idea of finding a standardized way to measure happiness isn't a new idea. In fact Bhutan has established their own measurement for Happiness, GNH (Gross National Happiness)

Gross National Happiness

Bhutan being a nation with many Buddhists used Buddhists ideals when trying to measure their GNH or Gross National Happiness. Such as the idea that human society only benefits greatly when material and spiritual development occurs concurrently and help one another.

In the end they decided to measure the following statistics to figure out GNH:

1. Economic Wellness: Average Income, Consumer Debt, Income Distribution, etc.
2. Environmental Wellness: Pollution, Noise, Traffic, etc.
3. Physical Wellness: Disease, Healthcare, etc.
4. Mental Wellness: Usage of Antidepressants, Psychotherapy Patients, etc.
5. Workplace Wellness: Unemployment Rate, Lawsuits in Workplace, Job Change, etc.
6. Social Wellness: Discrimination, Divorce Rates, Crime Rates, etc.

The previously mentioned statistics were used and incorporated into the first GNH Global Survey, which involved multiple countries including Brazil, Canada, and Bhutan.

"Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product"

By: H.M. Jigme Singye Wangchuk

The above picture shows how the Bhutanese and other nations found GNP and GDP to be not fully accurate measures of happiness with some calling Paul Hawken saying this about GDP: "At present, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP"

Even though this seems like a great scale to measure Happiness, it isn't as many critics say that such a method could be changed by the surveyor in a way that would suit their interests and thus would be difficult to compare with other countries to compare with. Also the method requires sending surveys to citizens or directly talking with citizens which may be easy for a country the size of Bhutan but for countries as large as the U.S. or China, this would be an inconvenient method.

Gallup Poll

The Gallup Poll was started by in 1935 by George Gallup, who founded the organization that would become the Gallup Organization. George Gallup wanted a way to figure out the opinions of the people in an objective way and in order to do so he knew that he couldn't hold polls that paid for or sponsored in any way by special interest groups such as any political party. The Gallup Poll didn't become very well known until it accurately predicted who would win the election in 1936 and would then on continue to be right for every presidential election except in 1948 and in 1976. The poll though was off a bit in the 2012 presidential election, causing critics to say that the Gallup Poll was the least inaccurate from any other poll. But Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief at Gallop, argued that Gallup looks at the national popular vote rather than who would win the election and that poll was within statistical margin of error. And in the same year, Mark Blumenthal, a poll analyst, commended Gallup for its transparency when polling and asked other polling companies to be more like Gallup and reveal their raw data.

The preceding paragraph was to establish the credibility of the Gallup Poll as it is used for many things outside of predicting presidenital elections such as the Gallup World Poll, which supposedly measures:

1. Law and Order
2. Food and Shelter
3. Institutions and Infrastructure
4. Employment/Good Jobs
5. Well being
6. Brain Gain/Education

While the preceding statistics do seem like valid statistics to measure and the company that conducts the poll is rather transparent in doing so, there is still criticism against the poll. A major criticism is that the statistics that the Gallup Poll measures are rather subjective and opinionated with another being since that in July 2013, the Gallup Organization had to pay $10.5 million for violating the false claims act by knowingly overstating its true estimated labor hours to the US Mint and State Departments. With a company having broken a law how trustworthy can it be really then?

The methods mentioned above are just a few examples people have tried to use to evaluate their country's overall happiness and well-being. These measurements can't be used properly as either they don't have good standards, allow room for bias, or they aren't used by enough countries to find information for. So the standard of HDI was used to evaluate a country's happiness as this has good standards, done by government, and information provided from each country but not GDP which will be talked about on the next page.