By CARL BIALIK
Governments, academics and pollsters are hot on the trail of happiness.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has launched an initiative to measure the national mood in a way that isn't captured by traditional economic statistics. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German legislators are looking into similar programs. U.S. government researchers and Gallup pollsters are asking hundreds of thousands of Americans each year how satisfied they are with their lives.
Gauging the Well Being of Happiness Measures
But statisticians' efforts to measure happiness are ridden with uncertainty. Around the world, people tend to describe themselves as happy even when they express many specific complaints and doubts about their lives or their government. Some economists say that even if a reliable happiness test could be devised, it would be risky to craft policy based on a broad metric. Instead, they say, happiness is more reliably reflected in things that are objectively measured, such as income, health and living conditions.
Simon Chapple, senior economist with the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's social-policy division, has doubts about whether it is possible to measure how happiness is influenced by public policy. "This is an academic field in an enormous state of flux," Dr. Chapple says. "Controversy is still out there."
But other economists see little downside in the efforts. Richard Layard, an economist at the London School of Economics, is an advocate of trying to track happiness as "a basic measure of the progress of a society." Its subjectivity isn't a problem, in his view: "The most important things in life are subjective."
The U.K.'s effort to gauge the national mood shows how nascent the science is. Under Mr. Cameron's direction, the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics is looking at how to assess well being by soliciting feedback on Facebook and Twitter and in more than 100 public meetings around the country. The agency also posted a poll on its website asking how the government might best measure the people's mood. A tweet Friday asked, "Do you like singing and dancing? Could music affect #ukwellbeing?"
The meetings end next month, and the agency hopes to issue a first set of well-being indicators, including self-reported happiness and more objective measures, by the end of 2011.
The U.K. researchers are hoping to produce a measure that would be comparable with other countries. But researchers aren't sure whether national differences reflect true variations in happiness or merely point to linguistic and cultural differences. They note, for example, that Latin American countries routinely score higher than would be expected based on variables such as income, while Asian countries score lower.
Some happiness-survey skeptics point out another potential problem: People are, by and large, fairly happy, or at least say they are when surveyed. For instance, since 2005 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's massive Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone survey has asked respondents, "In general, how satisfied are you with your life?" Each year, at least 92% of respondents have said they are satisfied or very satisfied. That might be good news for the national mood, but it is less helpful for researchers probing what changes to public policy will improve people's well being. If so many people profess to be as happy as possible, there is little room for improvement.
Meanwhile, since 2008 Gallup has been polling Americans nearly every day about their mood, for its Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Through two national elections, a recession, war and natural disasters, the American mood has been fairly stable—"actually one of our most stable items when tracked over time, another reason why you need to look at more than just this one metric," says Dan Witters, a research director at Gallup. The national mood hit a low in February 2009, when job losses were steep; in that month, 87% of Americans said they were happy "a lot of the day yesterday." The peak, in June 2010, was 89%.
Since broad questions about happiness don't appear to do a good job of tracking changes in the national mood, researchers have found other ways to zero in on people's feelings. Gallup finds that when it asks specific questions about enjoyment, stress and worry, a more complicated picture emerges.
Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist who has advised Mr. Sarkozy on happiness measures, says governments and other researchers would be better off collecting and monitoring a range of data, both objective and subjective. "One shouldn't be inspired to have a single number," Mr. Stiglitz says.
Governments, academics and pollsters are hot on the trail of happiness.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has launched an initiative to measure the national mood in a way that isn't captured by traditional economic statistics. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German legislators are looking into similar programs. U.S. government researchers and Gallup pollsters are asking hundreds of thousands of Americans each year how satisfied they are with their lives.
Gauging the Well Being of Happiness Measures
But statisticians' efforts to measure happiness are ridden with uncertainty. Around the world, people tend to describe themselves as happy even when they express many specific complaints and doubts about their lives or their government. Some economists say that even if a reliable happiness test could be devised, it would be risky to craft policy based on a broad metric. Instead, they say, happiness is more reliably reflected in things that are objectively measured, such as income, health and living conditions.
Simon Chapple, senior economist with the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's social-policy division, has doubts about whether it is possible to measure how happiness is influenced by public policy. "This is an academic field in an enormous state of flux," Dr. Chapple says. "Controversy is still out there."
But other economists see little downside in the efforts. Richard Layard, an economist at the London School of Economics, is an advocate of trying to track happiness as "a basic measure of the progress of a society." Its subjectivity isn't a problem, in his view: "The most important things in life are subjective."
The U.K.'s effort to gauge the national mood shows how nascent the science is. Under Mr. Cameron's direction, the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics is looking at how to assess well being by soliciting feedback on Facebook and Twitter and in more than 100 public meetings around the country. The agency also posted a poll on its website asking how the government might best measure the people's mood. A tweet Friday asked, "Do you like singing and dancing? Could music affect #ukwellbeing?"
The meetings end next month, and the agency hopes to issue a first set of well-being indicators, including self-reported happiness and more objective measures, by the end of 2011.
The U.K. researchers are hoping to produce a measure that would be comparable with other countries. But researchers aren't sure whether national differences reflect true variations in happiness or merely point to linguistic and cultural differences. They note, for example, that Latin American countries routinely score higher than would be expected based on variables such as income, while Asian countries score lower.
Some happiness-survey skeptics point out another potential problem: People are, by and large, fairly happy, or at least say they are when surveyed. For instance, since 2005 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's massive Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone survey has asked respondents, "In general, how satisfied are you with your life?" Each year, at least 92% of respondents have said they are satisfied or very satisfied. That might be good news for the national mood, but it is less helpful for researchers probing what changes to public policy will improve people's well being. If so many people profess to be as happy as possible, there is little room for improvement.
Meanwhile, since 2008 Gallup has been polling Americans nearly every day about their mood, for its Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Through two national elections, a recession, war and natural disasters, the American mood has been fairly stable—"actually one of our most stable items when tracked over time, another reason why you need to look at more than just this one metric," says Dan Witters, a research director at Gallup. The national mood hit a low in February 2009, when job losses were steep; in that month, 87% of Americans said they were happy "a lot of the day yesterday." The peak, in June 2010, was 89%.
Since broad questions about happiness don't appear to do a good job of tracking changes in the national mood, researchers have found other ways to zero in on people's feelings. Gallup finds that when it asks specific questions about enjoyment, stress and worry, a more complicated picture emerges.
Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist who has advised Mr. Sarkozy on happiness measures, says governments and other researchers would be better off collecting and monitoring a range of data, both objective and subjective. "One shouldn't be inspired to have a single number," Mr. Stiglitz says.
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