Do you really want to be happy? (2)
Earlier this week, I attended a packed-out seminar at the London School of Economics” entitled “Measuring Happiness?” which was addressed by four experts on this subject. The second speaker was Anthony Oswald who is professor of economics at Warwick University.
In a fascinating 10 minutes with lots of slides, some of the points he made were:
- Simon Kuznets was the originator of the notion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but he had pointed out that GDP is not the only measure of a nation’s progress
- The Stiglitz Report commissioned by the French President Sarkozy had set out the case for a wider measure of a nation’s progress
- Following David Cameron’s support for the idea, the UK now measures happiness through surveys commissioned by the Office of National Statistics (ONS)
- Out of score of seven, most UK citizens rate their happiness as around six
- There is a pronounced U curve in the relationship between happiness and age – generally peak happiness occurs in one’s early seventies
- The probability of experiencing depression and taking anti-depressants relates to age in a similar way
He posed the question: What makes countries happy? He identified the following factors as among the important variables:
- Higher social spending
- Unemployment insurance
- Clean air and access to countryside
- Low unemployment and low inflation
- Low crime and low corruption
- Openness to global trade
- Genetic factors