On September 27, I questioned whether anyone could develop a better measure of well-being than the GDP even when Dr. Stiglitz’s commission suggested the possibility.
Perhaps confirming the challenge, several lists of state happiness levels were recently publicized. The 2008 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index had Utah as 1, California 9, New York 35 and West Virginia last, at 50. http://www.ahiphiwire.org/WellBeing/Display.aspx?doc_code=RWBStateRanks
By contrast, an article published in Science (12/17/09) tells us not to live in New York or California if we want to be happy. Instead, the results say move to Louisiana!
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/pressoswu.pdf
Happily, they both agree that the people living in Hawaii tend to be the happiest in the country.
Any implications here for changing GDP?
More tomorrow…
Measuring Happiness
Elaine Schwartz
Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.