Canada leads in happiness research
Posted on November 28, 2010 in Child & Family Debates
Source: National Post — Authors: Kenyon Wallace
NationalPost.com – FinancialPost.com/News
Saturday, Nov. 27, 2010. Kenyon Wallace, National Post
A growing number of academics are calling on governments to take subjective measures of citizens’ well-being into account when setting policy, rather than relying solely on economic indicators. Chris Barrington-Leigh, a leading well-being researcher at the Univeristy of British Columbia, spoke this week with the National Post’s Kenyon Wallace about measuring happiness.
—
Q Where did research into well-being first develop?
A In economics it became prominent in the mid-1970s because Dick Easterlin, a researcher at the University of Southern California, examined various survey results across different countries and noticed a weird pattern: that people within a country are much happier if they are wealthy within that country, but not when compared to other countries, and over time, there are countries that have grown massively by economic measures, but they’re not getting happier. With the growth in different measurements and the better availability of data, [happiness research] blossomed again in the last decade or so.
Q Why study happiness or wellbeing?
A The obvious answer is that we want a happy society. If we have access to a measure of how good life is, then for goodness’ sake, let’s learn everything we can and pursue policies that are going to maximize that. All the other stuff like economic activity and growth are awfully useful, but surely not unto themselves. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last five years or so, there isn’t one perfect measure of subjective well-being. Q What is the status of research into happiness in Canada?
A Canada is actually one of the leaders. Statistics Canada runs a whole bunch of surveys, including a general social survey that happens every single year, in which about 25,000 households are interviewed, and a health survey. We must have over half a million Canadians who have been asked life-satisfaction questions by Statistics Canada.
Q What are some surprising findings about what makes people happy that you have made during your own research?
A It has been suggested that economic growth solves many problems, but what we’ve found is that if you just make everyone wealthier, especially among the wealthy countries and wealthy people, people are going to have higher standards of living but not necessarily feel better about life. Everyone’s deriving their happiness in part relative to material standards set by others. Measuring progress solely by growth in GDP is an outmoded idea because we have better ways to measure our social objectives. Q What are the things that actually make Canadians happy?
A Social factors, such as our interactions with our families, friends and institutions, and how much our identities are connected to those around us, explain a good fraction. We know that people in Maritime provinces are happier than people in bigger provinces with bigger cities. Policy-wise, it doesn’t mean we should all move to small towns or to the Maritimes, it means there are all sorts of policy interventions we can think about.
< http://www.financialpost.com/todays-paper/Canada+leads+happiness+research/3892963/story.html >
Tags: participation, standard of living
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2010 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Child & Family Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Recent Comments
You are good writer. Thank you.
I am very happy to look your post. Thanks a lot and i am taking a look ahead to touch you.
Lovely just what I was looking for. Thanks to the author for taking his clock time on this one.
fantastic post, very informative. I wonder why more of the ther experts in the field do not break it down like this. You should continue your writing. I am confident, you have a great readers’ base already!
This post impressed me with how confidently it handled a nuanced topic, avoiding oversimplification while still remaining accessible to readers who are new to the subject area.
Sometimes, the sheer magnitude of the information seems overwhelming.
How come you do not have your website viewable in mobile format? cant see anything in my Droid.
Awesome post. It’s so good to see someone taking the time to share this information
This piece delivers real substance from beginning to end, the kind of reading experience that reminds you how good online content can be when someone truly cares about their craft.
Saw your material, and hope you publish more soon.
What i discover troublesome is to find a weblog that may capture me for a minute however your blog is different. Bravo.
You appear to know so much about this, and I see you’re a published author. Thanks
Your resources are well developed.
Spot on with this write-up, I truly believe this website requirements a lot much more consideration. I’ll probably be once more to read much much more, thanks for that info.
Tips and tools you offer are so helpful to agencies in our community.
I wrote down your blog in my bookmark. I hope that it somehow did not fall and continues to be a great place for reading texts.
I believe you have remarked on some very interesting points , thankyou for the post.
I cannot thank you more than enough for the blogposts on your website. I know you set a lot of time and energy into these and truly hope you know how deeply I appreciate it. I hope I’ll do a similar thing person sooner or later.
have already been reading ur blog for a couple of days. really enjoy what you posted. btw i will be doing a report about this topic. do you happen to know any great websites or forums that I can find out more? thanks a lot.
We’re developing a conference, and it looks like you would be a great speaker.