Can Happiness Be Measured?
The measurement of happiness as an indicator of social progress diverges from conventional development metrics that emphasise economic growth as the end goal of development. Proponents of wellbeing measures argue that traditional measurements, based on national economic indicators of Gross Domestic- or Gross National- Product (GDP and GNP), fail to provide feedback on issues of broader societal importance, such as physical and mental health, human rights and freedoms, and environmental sustainability. The philosophical appeal of basing human progress on levels of wellbeing has prompted increasing efforts to incorporate more holistic metrics into governance and policy planning endeavours in recent years. The measurement of happiness and wellbeing, however, raises several methodological challenges.
The basis of these challenges lies in happiness being a dynamic, flexible and subjective emotional concept. The fact that happiness is not a universal constant (Bell and Morse, 2011: 229) makes the task of its very definition highly problematic. Further, the measurement of subjective wellbeing through the social survey methods frequently utilised prompts questions of reliability, relating to issues specific to the measurement of wellbeing and issues related to survey methodologies in general. Attempts to overcome these shortcomings have led to the development of composite indexes linked to quantitative indicators, such as the Human Development Index (HDI) created by the United Nations Development Programme, and the Bhutanese government’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. Whilst these indexes function more practically in guiding governance and policy than simplistic surveys of subjective well-being, they are nonetheless heavily based on subjective sociocultural value judgments of the determinants of happiness and how much each matter. The utilisation of indicators, that is, places subjective assumptions on the experience of happiness and wellbeing, overlooking the reality that happiness is perceived and experienced in a multitude of ways.
Yet, the fact that happiness measurements are imperfect should not entirely discount their value. In addition to their philosophical and ethical appeal, happiness measures have the potential to provide valuable policy direction in areas that traditional economic metrics were unable to. The broad consensus that exists in development and policy planning arenas on this will continue to prompt efforts to refine wellbeing measurement methodologies and attempt to overcome their inherent challenges.
The emergence of the concept of measuring happiness and its theoretical underpinnings
The concept of measuring happiness as an indicator of human development emerged as a response to the dominant development discourse emphasising economic growth as the end goal of development. The latter paradigm, which has governed national and international policy endeavours since at least the 1950s, rests heavily on national accounting measurements, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP), which are intended to act as proxy indicators of societal progress (Bell and Morse, 2011: 228; and Brooks, 2013: 3645). In recent decades, however, these conventional economic measures have encountered increasing critique on several fronts. In addition to the fact that these metrics ignore essential non-market services, such as education (Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, 2008: 13), national income aggregates fail to provide feedback on issues that are considered to be of broader societal importance and vital for balanced development, such as environmental, physical and emotional health, education, social equality and inclusion, political rights and freedoms, and quality of life and wellbeing (Bates, 2009: 5; and Bell and Morse, 2011: 228).
Conventional income measures have also been criticised because “beyond a certain level, further increases in GDP produce diminishing returns in life expectancy, infant mortality, participation in education, life satisfaction and happiness” (Brooks, 2013: 3649). This may result from related factors, such as decreased leisure time, changing consumer aspirations and social comparison, natural resource depletion, and the erosion of community cohesiveness, social values and feelings of belonging. Thus, whilst economic growth may represent an important enabling factor in social development, it is not automatically representative of the economic or social wellbeing on an individual or societal level, and its emphasis in policy planning may, in fact, promote activities that decrease long-term well-being rather than improve it (Brooks, 2013: 3649).
Considering these limitations, it has become increasingly accepted that a more comprehensive and societal perspective on development is necessary (Zaidi, 2014: 38), which shifts the emphasis from increasing levels of production and consumption to non-economic factors (Kahneman and Krueger, 2006: 22). Such a view necessarily impacts the ways in which social progress is achieved and measured (Brooks, 2013: 3645). The measure of happiness as an indicator of human development thus has both philosophical and functional appeal (Hirata, 2003:99). Yet several methodological challenges have caused difficulties in incorporating these measures into governance and policy planning.
What is happiness? Defining a subjective term
The growing interest in happiness metrics, referred to as “the new science of happiness”, has spread across a wide array of disciplines, including philosophy, biology, economics, psychology, sociology, and political science (Brockmann and Delhey, 2010: 1). Consequently, definitions of happiness have been presented from a myriad of disciplinary backgrounds, leading to different understandings of what happiness is, and what its determinants are.
For example, whilst researchers of the biological sciences might be inclined to view happiness as an anatomical function that is universal across sociocultural boundaries, those from anthropological backgrounds are more likely to emphasise the different ways in which happiness can be perceived and experienced across sociocultural boundaries.
Within the linguistic and cultural framing of Western academia (where most happiness research has been carried out), ‘happiness’ is typically characterised as relating mainly to an immediate emotional state, in contrast to ‘wellbeing’, which refers to a broader sense of life satisfaction (Bates, 2006: 9). In this context, use of the term ‘wellbeing’ is preferred over ‘happiness’ to focus research on measuring “the subjective enjoyment of life as a whole” (Brockmann and Delhey, 2010: 2), yet the terms ‘happiness’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘life satisfaction’ tend to be used interchangeably in the Western academic context (Veenhoven, 2007: 4).
Yet this does little to solve the ambiguity of its conceptualisation across cultural and linguistic boundaries. The fluidity and relativity of the concept of happiness and wellbeing are representative of the challenges encountered when attempting to measure these emotional notions among the broader population, as will be discussed below.
Measures of subjective wellbeing
The methodology typically used to measure happiness is a survey in which respondents offer a quantitative score of their happiness or satisfaction with life (Bates, 2009: 7). There are, however, several problems associated with the reliability of data from surveys of subjective wellbeing, which are both specific to the measurement of happiness and common to survey methodologies in general.
First is the fact that interpersonal differences exist in the subjective evaluation of what being ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ might be. Prominent studies have demonstrated that a person’s impression of satisfaction or wellbeing often has more to do with temperament and personality than with life circumstances (Kahneman and Krueger, 2006: 8).
Moreover, interpersonal subjectivity is markedly evident across societal or national boundaries, where it is vulnerable to linguistic subtleties or cultural norms (Bates, 2009: 8; and Eckersley, 2009: 3). In the social sciences generally, cross cultural surveys are always at risk of offering misleading feedback when words are translated arbitrarily and without cultural sensitivity. This risk is magnified when dealing with ambiguous emotional concepts (Hoellerer, 2011: 47). Cultural norms, further, may lead to response bias where individuals, irrelevant of their actual satisfaction with life, will respond in line with social convention. For example, in Japan social norms of personal modesty and humility have been shown to prompt respondents to play down their levels of wellbeing. This contrasts with countries such as the United States, where social conventions encourage a more hedonistic culture and an emotional state of happiness is socially favourable. It may thus be argued that social surveys provide more feedback on the “social desirability of happiness”, rather than actual levels of wellbeing (Hoellerer, 2011: 48).
Impressions of happiness do not only vary between individuals; indeed, they can vary with the same individual over different time periods. A respondent’s rating of their happiness or wellbeing can be affected by factors such as their mood at the time of the questionnaire and recent life events (such as marriage or bereavement) (Kahneman and Krueger, 2006: 14). Moreover, an individual might change their own conceptualisation of happiness or satisfaction over time, so that their responses might vary if they take part in the survey at one time versus another (Bates, 2009: 7). In these cases, data taken from the same individual over time may be just as subjective as the interpersonal differences discussed above. Thus, variances in compositions of happiness are evident on individual, societal, spatial and temporal scales (Brockmann and Delhey, 2010: 3).
Many of the legitimacy issues of subjective wellbeing surveys can be related to shortcomings of survey methodologies in general. For example, subtleties in interrogation techniques can impact responses significantly. These include differences in the place where interviews are held, interpersonal characteristics of the interviewer, and the sequence and wording of questions. Response bias may also be evident between personal interviews and anonymous questionnaires owing to psychosocial habits of “self-presentation and social-desirability” (Veenhoven, 2007: 13).
Further problems might arise if respondents offer responses with a strategic view of how the information might be utilised. For example, if survey data is likely to be used to judge the performance or affect the policies of the government, some respondents might shape their responses to denote their views on government performance rather than their actual wellbeing (Bates, 2009: 8).
Linking happiness with indicators: composite indexes of human wellbeing
Beyond these methodological challenges, simplistic surveys of subjective wellbeing are particularly problematic from a governance and policy perspective as they provide little indication of areas for policy intervention. Subsequently, several attempts have been made to develop a number of indicators that capture various aspects believed to have a direct impact on human wellbeing. These indicators are myriad, but might range from material assets, physical and mental health, and education, to crime and divorce rates (Hirata, 2003: 132).
Two of the most prominent attempts to operationalise wellbeing indexes are the Human Development Index, designed by the United Nations Development Programme, and the Gross National Happiness Index utilised by the government of Bhutan. Though both have proven valuable in bringing together broader views of societal wellbeing and evidence-based policy, they are not without their shortcomings.
The HDI, initiated in 1990, gives equal weighting to three aspects of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), acquiring education (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels), and attaining a decent standard of living (measured by per capita GDP at purchasing power parity) (Bates, 2006: 10).
The concept of Gross National Happiness was first introduced by Bhutan’s fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s when he declared that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product”. Yet Bhutan’s first attempt to measure GNH did not occur until the country’s 2005 census, in which a single question measured subjective amounts of happiness (Brooks, 2013: 3646-50). Since then, Bhutan’s GNH index has been developed significantly to incorporate a wide assortment of indicators – in total, thirty-three indicators across nine domains (Brooks, 2013: 3650). In contrast to simplistic measures of subjective wellbeing that attempt to measure aggregate or average happiness, the GNH measures the extent to which respondents have attained a “sufficient level” across these domains (Bates, 2013: 11). The multidimensional nature of Bhutan’s GNH index has proven successful in offering an alternative to simplistic approaches to subjective wellbeing. By highlighting insufficiently fulfilled domains, it effectively guides policy planning and acts as a metric of development performance (Brooks, 2013: 3650). As such, it is an effective contribution to the measurement of human wellbeing (Bates, 2006: 12).
Yet the problem with assigning indicators to measures of happiness is that the process inherently requires value judgements regarding what is included and what weighting to assign to them. This is an issue of broader methodological concern outside the boundaries of measures of happiness. Indeed, developing and interpreting indicators is more of an art than a science – “intellectual constructs derived from a cultural milieu” – leaving ample room for subjectivity at all stages of their application (Bell and Morse 2011: 230).
In the case of Bhutan, it is unclear to what extent the measurement’s construction reflects the values of the Bhutanese people and whether the dimensions included in the survey and the weighting that each dimension has been assigned reflect a cultural consensus (Bates, 2006: 12).
In the case of the HDI, an issue lies in the fact that it is designed to be compared across national boundaries, using the same indicators and weightings across the different countries. This is problematic considering the cultural relativities associated with the determinants of happiness, often related to levels of socioeconomic development. There is evidence, for example, that in affluent, post-industrial societies, “post-materialist” concerns, such as individual autonomy and “job creativity”, become more important than the financial satisfaction that is prioritised in less affluent societies (Brockmann and Delhey, 2010: 4-5).
Indeed, indexes such as the HDI have been criticised for being based on Western values and contexts, which emphasise individualism, democracy and social liberalisation (Eckersley, 2009: 3). Whilst using these indicators might provide relatively accurate measurements of life satisfaction in societal or cultural contexts in which they are valued, they may be irrelevant indicators in others, and thus risk providing misleading feedback. Moreover, this can skew the results of large-scale cross-national comparisons like the HDI as, inevitably, Western countries would be shown to be happier in these surveys (Eckersley, 2009: 9). This can have far reaching ramifications in a development context with an influential actor such as the United Nations, as it may serve to entrench the status quo.
Conclusion
The measurement of happiness thus presents several methodological challenges. These challenges relate to issues specific to the measurement of an ambiguous emotional concept, but some – such as cross-cultural application and the development of indicators, are also evident in social research methodologies more generally. Thus, whilst happiness can be measured, these measurements will always be imperfect. This fact, however, should not negate the worth of happiness metrics altogether. Indeed, they offer significant philosophical and functional value for governance and development planning in the broader array of measurements they provide – social, environmental and economic – and, ultimately, in their reframing of the conceptualisation and objectives of human progress.
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