The Happynomics of Life - NYTimes.com:
With Brits stiff upper lip is more the thing, and a good laugh if warranted.
Answers suggest Brits link happiness to bird song, knowing themselves, the environment, responsible pet ownership, contributing to society, going out into the wild and reading Socrates.
Happynomics tries to put value on things that don’t have price tags. Open spaces, clear air, security, release from pressure — these are things of growing importance and scarcity.
With Brits stiff upper lip is more the thing, and a good laugh if warranted.
Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to create a national happiness index providing quarterly measures of how folks feel.... the case for trying to measure the happiness of a society, rather than its growth and productivity alone, has become compelling.
Stress has become the byword for a spreading anxiety. This anxiety’s personal, about jobs and money and health, but also general: that we can’t go on like this, somehow a world of more than seven billion people is going to have to “downshift” ...
British research has suggested that money itself does not confer happiness, although wealthier people tend to be happier; that employment is critical to self-esteem; that women tend to be happier than men; and that people need something beyond the material for fulfillment.
The Office for National Statistics will ask:
How happy did you feel yesterday? How anxious did you feel yesterday? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
Andrew Oswald, a happiness economics expert at the University of Warwick, suggested the questions were a good start, although he would have added, “How well have you been sleeping?” — an important mental health indicator — and “How pressurized do you feel your time is?”
The important thing, he argues, it to shift “from the concept of financial prosperity to the idea of emotional prosperity.”
Stress has become the byword for a spreading anxiety. This anxiety’s personal, about jobs and money and health, but also general: that we can’t go on like this, somehow a world of more than seven billion people is going to have to “downshift” ...
British research has suggested that money itself does not confer happiness, although wealthier people tend to be happier; that employment is critical to self-esteem; that women tend to be happier than men; and that people need something beyond the material for fulfillment.
The Office for National Statistics will ask:
How happy did you feel yesterday? How anxious did you feel yesterday? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
Andrew Oswald, a happiness economics expert at the University of Warwick, suggested the questions were a good start, although he would have added, “How well have you been sleeping?” — an important mental health indicator — and “How pressurized do you feel your time is?”
The important thing, he argues, it to shift “from the concept of financial prosperity to the idea of emotional prosperity.”
Answers suggest Brits link happiness to bird song, knowing themselves, the environment, responsible pet ownership, contributing to society, going out into the wild and reading Socrates.
Happynomics tries to put value on things that don’t have price tags. Open spaces, clear air, security, release from pressure — these are things of growing importance and scarcity.
