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.
252 Responses to “Canada leads in happiness research”
« Older Comments | Newer Comments »
Recent Comments
Its wonderful as your other blog posts : D, regards for putting up.
I’m so happy to read this. This is the type of manual that needs to be given and not the random misinformation that’s at the other blogs. Appreciate your sharing this best doc.
Do you offer workshops?
Clear, concise and easy to access.
I encountered your site after doing a search for new contesting using Google, and decided to stick around and read more of your articles. Thanks for posting, I have your site bookmarked now.
It’s time for communities to rally.
Awesome post. It’s so good to see someone taking the time to share this information
Hi there! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no back up. Do you have any solutions to protect against hackers?
Hi, I just hopped over to your web-site through StumbleUpon. Not somthing I might typically browse, but I liked your views none the less. Thanks for making something worthy of reading through.
I dont think Ive caught all the angles of this subject the way youve pointed them out. Youre a true star, a rock star man. Youve got so much to say and know so much about the subject that I think you should just teach a class about it
Woah this is just an insane amount of information, must of taken ages to compile so thanx so much for just sharing it with all of us. If your ever in any need of related information, just check out my own site!
I like this weblog very much so much great info .
This blog post was beautifully structured, giving readers a thorough understanding without overwhelming them. Every paragraph added something meaningful rather than just padding the word count.
Thanks for another great post. Where else may anybody get that type of info in such an ideal way of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I’m at the search for such information.
This is something that will need all of our combined efforts to address.
A cool post there mate ! Thank you for posting.
This guide was surprisingly detailed, breaking down complex ideas into simple and accessible points which made it a genuinely satisfying read from start to finish.
It’s clear you’re passionate about the issues.
My brother suggested I might like this websiteHe was once totally rightThis post truly made my dayYou can not imagine simply how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
I found myself nodding along throughout this entire article because every point resonated and felt grounded in real understanding rather than recycled information from other sources.