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
Does it look like we’re in for a big ride here?
I think it is a nice point of view. I most often meet people who rather say what they suppose others want to hear. Good and well written! I will come back to your site for sure!
I simply could not leave your site before suggesting that I actually enjoyed the usual info a person supply in your visitors? Is going to be back often to inspect new posts
The sketch is tasteful, your authored material stylish.
If you don’t mind, where do you host your weblog? I am looking for a very good web host and your webpage seams to be extremely fast and up most the time…
This information is very important and you’ll need to know this when you constructor your own photo voltaic panel.
I appreciate, cause I found just what I was looking for. You’ve ended my four day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye -.
Loving the info on this website , you have done outstanding job on the blog posts.
Hi there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s truly informative. It’s important to cover these trends.
The post is absolutely great! Lots of great info and inspiration, both of which we all need! Also like to admire the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer! I will bookmark your website!
Woh I enjoy your content , saved to bookmarks!
Good day! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading through your articles. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same subjects? Thanks a lot!
How come you do not have your website viewable in mobile format? cant see anything in my Droid.
Amazing article, cheers, I will bookmark you now.
Thanks for posting this. Looking for these resources 😀
Keep it up!. I usually don’t post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful A rise in An increase in An increase in.
Admiring the time and effort you put into your site and detailed info you offer!
I Am Going To have to come back again when my course load lets up – however I am taking your Rss feed so i can go through your site offline. Thanks.
If most people wrote about this subject with the eloquence that you just did, I’m sure people would do much more than just read, they act. Great stuff here. Please keep it up.
You have some helpful ideas! Maybe I should consider doing this by myself.