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Subjective Well-Being and Policy

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Abstract

This paper analyses whether the aggregation of individual happiness scores to a National Happiness Index can still be trusted once governments have proclaimed their main objective to be the pursuit—or even maximization—of this National Happiness Index. The answer to this investigation is clear-cut: as soon as the National Happiness Index has become a policy goal, it can no longer be trusted to reflect people’s true happiness. Rather, the Index will be systematically distorted due to the incentive for citizens to answer strategically and the incentive for government to manipulate the Index in its favour. Such a distortion would arise even if the measurement of subjective well-being correctly reflected actual happiness before the intervention of government. Governments in a democracy should establish the conditions enabling individuals to become happy. The valuable and important results of happiness research should be introduced into the political process. Each person should be free to pursue happiness according to his or her preferences. This process is supported by obedience to the rule of law, human rights and free media, as well as by extended political participation rights, decentralized public decision-making, an open and effective education system fostering upward mobility and the possibility to find suitable employment.

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Notes

  1. Csikszentmihalyi (1992), Kahneman et al. (1999), Wilson and Gilbert (2003), Lyubomirsky (2008), Diener (2009), Franklin (2010).

  2. Van Praag and Kapteyn (1973) and Easterlin (1974) are pathbreaking. See the surveys by Frey and Stutzer (2002a, b, c, 2005), Di Tella and MacCulloch (2006), Dolan et al. (2008), Frey (2008), and the collection of articles by Easterlin (2002, 2010), Eid and Larsen (2008), Dutt and Radcliff (2009), Frey and Stutzer (2012).

  3. Social scientists beyond economists have also engaged in the study of happiness, in particular the sociologist (Veenhoven 1989) and the political scientist (Lane 2000). See also Feierabend and Feierabend (1966), Davies (1970) and Gurr (1970).

  4. In line with the literature, however, the more appealing term “happiness” will be generally used whenever there is no danger of misunderstanding.

  5. There are other approaches to measurement such as the Day Reconstruction Method by Kahneman et al. (2004) or the U-index (Kahneman and Krueger 2006).

  6. See Frey and Stutzer (2002a, b), Frey (2008), and especially for length and longevity Diener and Chan (2011), summarized in Frey (2011).

  7. For a similar argument see Minford (1983), as quoted in Clark and Oswald (1994).

  8. With respect to national income, for instance, some governments have simply included parts of the shadow economy so as to boost the figures. It remains unknown, however, to what extent these practices have occurred (see, e.g., Schneider and Enste 2002; Torgler et al. 2010; Schneider 2011).

  9. On this and the following, see, e.g., Dafflon and Rossi (1999), Forte (2001), Milesi-Ferretti (2004), Koen and Van den Noord (2005), Von Hagen and Wolff (2006), Balassone et al. (2007), Buti et al. (2007), Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (2009) and European Commission (2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Bruno S. Frey

  2. Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Friedrichshafen, Germany

    Bruno S. Frey

  3. Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA), Basel, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

  4. University of Zurich, Hottingerstrasse 10, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey & Jana Gallus

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  1. Bruno S. Frey
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  2. Jana Gallus
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Correspondence to Bruno S. Frey.

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Frey, B.S., Gallus, J. Subjective Well-Being and Policy. Topoi 32, 207–212 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9155-1

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