Another day, another article that supports a broad idea that we, as a collective, cannot go on and measure our progress by relying solely on those measures of economic growth such as GDP. It is important to view progress from a holistic life point of view. One of a promising measure is "happiness index". Here is a link to the Op-Ed article in the Times by Roger Cohen.
Some of the direct quotes and evidence from the article are:
- "We can't go on like this, running only to stand still, making things faster and faster, consuming more and more food (with consequent pressures on prices); that somehow a wold of more than seven billion people is going to have to downshift to make it, revise its criteria of what constitutes well-being."
- Britain will begin measuring how Britons' happiness by asking the citizens to respond on a scale of 0 to 10 on 4 questions:
- How happy did you feel yesterday?
- How anxious did you feel yesterday?
- How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Although it is a step forward to shift from focusing on financial prosperity to the idea of overall well-being, we still need to make sure that what we learn from well-being links to policy making.
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