The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Back in February 2011 I looked at the British government’s plans to measure the nation’s well-being. Now the National Statistician, Jil Matheson, has published her Reflections on the National Debate on Measuring National Well-being.

Was it worth waiting for?  Have we learnt anything new about well-being?  Was it worth the £2m it cost to conduct this ‘debate?’

Based on the fact that they only captured the views of  some 35,000 people (about 0.06% of the population), probably not. Have we learnt anything new about well-being? Having read Ms Matheson’s Reflections, again probably not. As I pointed out before, they’d secured enough  experts on the advisory panel to tell them everything they needed to know about well-being without spending £2m and 10 months consulting the general public. If the exercise was intended to engage the public and make Cameron et al on the coalition government look like they’re more in touch with the general public, then judging by the numbers who took part, it probably hasn’t succeeded on those grounds either.

And of course, there is always the danger that politicians will actually bow to public opinion about what makes them happy, when they don’t actually know (the  ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ argument).

According to this report, a draft set of national well-being indicators will be published in Oct 2011.  We wait with bated breath.

UPDATE: 18/08/11

In the light of the recent riots in England, you might be interested to read what people said mattered most to them:

• “children who contributed to the debate through events in schools said eating breakfast in the morning, playing on computer games, playing with dolls and push-chairs, celebrating Christmas and birthdays were some of the things that matter most
• some young adults included make-up, good clothes, alcohol, music and fast food on their list
• some older people were concerned about the loss of a sense of community

All the age groups highlighted the importance of family, friends, health, financial security, equality and fairness in determining well-being” (p9).

I wonder what the Government will make of that.

Image: The British Parliament & Big Ben: ** Maurice **

The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

In this month’s article for Positive Psychology News, I look at the government’s plans to measure the UK’s well-being in 2011, and Martin Seligman’s new Well-being Theory.

Stop Press: the Office for National Statistics has now announced the four well-being related questions that will be included in this year’s Integrated Household Survey. They are:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

Image: The British Parliament & Big Ben: ** Maurice **

Life Satisfaction vs Emotion

Diener’s ‘happiness formula’ is one of the most well-known in Positive Psychology:

Subjective Well-being (i.e. happiness) = Satisfaction with life + Positive Emotion – Negative Emotion.

This means that happiness is not a simple measure of how good you feel (emotion) but also includes a cognitive element of what you think about your life (satisfaction with life). Still with me? Great!

This explains why countries like Denmark can feature at the top of some happiness scales, but not others.

For example, when asked “on a scale of 0-10 how satisfied are you with your life?” Denmark comes top of the league table. But when you look at which countries are high in positive emotion, New Zealand, Honduras and Panama come at the top.

But happiness is even more complex than that – the presence of positive emotion is not the same thing as the absence of negative emotion (in the same way that health is not the mere absence of illness).

So countries which are high in positive emotion are not the same as those which are low in negative emotion (e.g. Denmark, Sweden and Australia).

Diener’s research with Gallup has also found that the top two predictors of satisfaction with life and positive emotion are not the same:

Predictors of satisfaction with life:
1. Money (as measured by GDP per capita)
2. Optimism
3. Whether I can count on other people

Predictors of positive emotion:
1. Whether I learned something yesterday
2. Freedom to choose
3. Whether I can count on other people

Relevance for Policy Use

According to the Gallup data, 94% of Danes score more then 8/10 for happiness, whereas 97% of Togolese score less than 3/10. Not surprisingly (because this is where Gallup’s interests lie), Diener used these extraordinary findings to argue that we should pay more attention to country-level well-being, since the way in which individual countries are run must be what makes the difference to these overall happiness scores. His suggestion is that societies would do well to use well-being measures in their creation of country-wide policies, as well as the more traditional economic and social measures.

It’s difficult not to disagree with him when you look at the data*; however, the question then arises as to whether it’s the government’s role to make people happy. My own perspective is the government does have a role to play in creating the right environment, although I think we could do a great deal more to improve people’s lives by spending the resources on treating mental illness effectively.

* Sadly the data Diener presented isn’t in the public arena since it belongs to the Gallup Organisation.

Putting aside the argument about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and depression (which is one definitely worth having), I’m not yet convinced that government intervention to make us all happier is either necessary or effective. I’m all for educating people to make their own decisions but perhaps the government should concentrate its efforts on creating better schools and hospitals first…

But no doubt it would become bogged down in happiness measurements, targets and standards anyway before any real difference was made!

Now Bhutan is in the news again because tomorrow it will hold its first-ever democratic elections. This could be seen as a test of how serious the two main political parties and their supporters are about happiness, or whether, when they have the opportunity, they put economic growth first.

The head of Bhutan’s planning commission suggests that happiness and economic growth are not incompatible, but nevertheless, observers are right to acknowledge that economic growth will have consequences, not all of them positive. But perhaps the Bhutanese know enough about well-being to be wise to the negative effects of materialism.

Whatever the result of the elections, it will be interesting to watch how democracy unfolds in Bhutan in the next few weeks and months.

Image: Babasteve