Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood

[siuyuin]

Wednesday finds me in a curmudgeon mood and wondering the purpose of
these measures. (And how mini-surveys of similar issues conducted in
Singapore must often be doctored. And with more of these coming up as
GE nears.)

-siu yuin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/14/happiness-index-britain-national-mood

Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood
Allegra Stratton, political correspondent
Sunday 14 November 2010 20.06 GMT


Despite 'nervousness', David Cameron wants measure of wellbeing to
steer government policy

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Stiglitz has called on world leaders to move
away from a purely economic concept of gross domestic ­product.
Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

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.

Despite "nervousness" in Downing Street at the prospect of testing the
national mood amid deep cuts and last week's riot in Westminster, the
Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce
measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging
"general wellbeing".

Countries such as France and Canada are looking at similar initiatives
as governments around the world come under pressure to put less store
on conventional economic measures of prosperity such as gross domestic
product.

British officials say there is still hesitation in some parts of
Whitehall over going ahead with the programme during such difficult
economic times, but Cameron is said to want to place the eventual
results at the heart of future government policy-making.

On 25 November, the government will ask the independent national
statistician Jil Matheson to devise questions to add to the existing
household survey by as early as next spring.

It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the government's
aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective
wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more
objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".

The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a
bundle of indications about our quality of life.

A government source said the results could be published quarterly in
the same way as the British crime survey, but the exact intervals are
yet to be agreed.

The source said: "The aim is to produce a fresh set of data, some of
it new, some of using existing data sets currently not very well used,
to be published – at a frequency to be decided – that assesses the
psychological and physical wellbeing of people around the UK. So
that's objective measurements of, for instance, how much recycling
gets done around the UK, alongside more subjective measures of
psychology and attitudes."

There are currently different views within the government on whether
all indicators should be shrunk into one single wellbeing indicator or
simple happiness index.

The government already polls people on their life satisfaction but
experts say the innovation is that the new tests will ask more
subjective questions and will be put to a larger sample size. The
combined wellbeing data set, it says, will have a more central role in
policy-making.

A Downing Street source said: "If you want to know, should I live in
Exeter rather than London? What will it do to my quality of life? You
need a large enough sample size and if you have a big sample, and have
more than one a year, then people can make proper analysis on what to
do with their life. And next time we have a comprehensive spending
review, let's not just guess what effect various policies will have on
people's wellbeing. Let's actually know."

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced last year he intended
to include happiness and wellbeing in France's measurement of economic
progress. Sarkozy was responding to recommendations made by two Nobel
economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, who called on world
leaders to move away from a purely economic concept of gross domestic
product, which measures economic production, to wellbeing and
sustainability. That report suggested a shift from production to
greater attention to household wealth and an assessment of whether
countries were growing sustainably or damaging the environment.

Canadian statisticians also poll subjective wellbeing across the
country but it is not part of their official data set.

John Helliwell, a member of Canada's National Statistics Council who
has been in talks with the UK on how to measure subjective wellbeing,
told the Guardian: "The UK plans are putting into action the two most
important elements of the Stiglitz/Sen report: systematically
measuring subjective wellbeing as part of a broader national
accounting system, and using these data to inform policy choices."

Over the last two months Downing Street has called on experts,
including Sen, to advise it on the policy and keep one eye on
Sarkozy's progress. "We've certainly drawn on Sarkozy, we have learnt
from them and hope to go a bit further," a source said.

"There has been scepticism but David Cameron was very clear in
opposition this would be what he would do and even in tough times it's
just as relevant an agenda. The purpose of GDP is ultimately to help
people lead more satisfactory lives and it is as important during a
downturn as during a boom."

In 2006, just five months into his time as Conservative party leader,
Cameron described the task of gauging people's wellbeing as one of the
"central political issues of our time".

Helliwell said: "Canadian statisticians and researchers also poll
subjective wellbeing across the country, but the data have thus far
not attracted much policy attention.

"What is or could be dramatically different in the UK is for the
government not just to undertake more widespread and thorough
collection of subjective wellbeing data, but also to give them a
central place in the choice and evaluation of public policies. That
would be a global first."