Govt spending £2million to see if we are happy..hmmm

[GabbyLoggon]

This will be two million quid of taxpayers dosh, in a recession

well, I am rather unhappy about the 2 million being spent on that.

The story is that as part of the national statistics on expenditure, income and other other indicators there will be an extra 'wellbeing' index Cameron Defends Wellbeing Index It's not exclusive to the UK and the idea is to judge the progress of the nation on more criteria than simply the financial. £2m is barely a drop in the ocean

ISNT: Quite fancy the Bahamas at n.5 ;O)

Okay, so let's look at the top 10 in the list of ISNT's linke of "The 20 happiest nations in the World"
1 - Denmark - no clue.

2 - Switzerland - they live in a country filled with Swiss chocolate. 'nuf said

3 - Austria - pastries

4 - Iceland - no clue. Erm, maybe Bjork hypnotised them?

5 - The Bahamas - wouldn't you be?

6 - Finland - um.

7 - Sweden - no clue

8 - Bhutan - um

9 - Brunei - uhhhhh

10 - Canada - okay, don't get this one either.

emy

A friend has told me that the only serious study of well-being he could find shows that 1976 is the year in which the British public was most contented with its lot... An odd one to pick, in retrospect!

I imagine how happy people are depends a lot on where they are versus where they'd ideally like to be. If you don't have much but your expectations are low, you'll be pretty happy. I don't remember 1976 all that well - I'd just started junior school - but there wasn't the same "culture of expectation" there is today. People were not so heavily assaulted by relentless consumerist images and convinced that they could have material goods and celebrity lifestyles. That seems to have happened mostly over the last two decades.

Unquietdad - I think people are also unhappy when things are taken away from them - whether it is fair or unfair they had them in the first place that's an entirely different argument.

For example I wasn't too bothered about receiving Child Benefit when I had my first child, and I saw it as a nice bonus. Fast forward 4 children and many years later, I feel very unhappy it has been taken away from us as it has become part of our family budget and it feels like a paycut.

A lot of people have to work harder/longer now for the same lifestyle they had a few years ago - although consumer goods on the whole are cheaper, life is so much more expensive; house prices have rocketed, energy bills and fuel bills have seen huge increases and so have food bills; everything is going up but salaries have been frozen in many many industries/professions for years now.

And for those unfortunate enough to have to commute on a London route, well train fares are so expensive now that I wonder whether it is worth working at all!!

notpartofthelifeplan - you said how I feel.

Completely disillushioned with the Coalition. Seems to have no plan but soundbites.

In any case there is no need for a happiness index. There is already a very well established US economic measure of unhappiness called The Misery Index. We could easly adopt it as it is very easy to compile from publicly available data that is already collected. There is no need for a costly 'Happiness Index Survey'. Happiness is after all just the inverse of unhappiness.

"The misery index is an economic indicator, created by economist Arthur Okun, and found by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It is assumed that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of inflation create economic and social costs for a country

A 2001 paper looking at large-scale surveys in Europe and the United States concluded that the basic misery index underweights the unhappiness caused by joblessness: "the estimates suggest that people would trade off a 1-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate for a 1.7-percentage-point increase in the inflation rate.""

Is it open to suggestions about how to make us happy after we have stated we are not happy, like some kind of comment box.

If enough of us say "if all MPs chucked themselves into the river and floated off to other shores with the rest of the rubbish it would make us happy" do you think they would do it?.

bit like writing Jedi on the national censuses

I think its a great idea.

Not sure how they're going to do it, but the sentiment is good.

I suffer from depression which I am treated for - must cost us, the taxpayer, a fortune with GP appointments, anti-depressants, councelling. I've never taken time off work for it, but there are those that do, therefore costing their companies money.
Then think of all the stress-related conditions; or people resorting to cigarettes or excess alcohol to feel 'happier' and the medical cost of that.

Companies spend massive amounts on staff satisfaction surveys because they know that happy staff are more productive.

Would I rather be happy than rich? Damn right, but there is financial benefit to the country of this index too.

2 million is peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

I do think the Government should look at different ways of measuring prosperity other than GDP so I don't think its a bad idea.

hammer the utilities companies and I'd be happyWhat was it Maggie said oh yes privatisation will mean competition and CHEAPER prices ha bloody ha

words fail me

I wonder what company did the research, and whether their MD is a Tory party benefactors.

Its be a done by sociologists at universitys

Happiness indexes have been looked at before but have never been successfully developed but if one can be then I see it could be of some use to the Government