page_title: Happiness economics
section_title: Happiness economics and indices timeline
hierarchical_section_title: Happiness economics / Happiness economics and indices timeline
caption_attribution_description: English: "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product" by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan. Slogan on a wall in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts
context_page_description: The economics of happiness or happiness economics is the quantitative and theoretical study of happiness, positive and negative affect, well-being, quality of life, life satisfaction and related concepts, typically combining economics with other fields such as psychology, health and sociology. It typically treats such happiness-related measures, rather than wealth, income or profit, as something to be maximized. The field has grown substantially since the late 20th century, for example by the development of methods, surveys and indices to measure happiness and related concepts. Its findings have been described as a challenge to the economics profession.
context_section_description: The idea that happiness is important to a society is not new. Many other prominent intellectuals, philosophers and political leaders throughout history, including Aristotle, Confucius, and Plato, incorporated happiness into their work.
  350 B.C.- "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." -Aristotle 
  Thomas Jefferson put the "pursuit of happiness" on the same level as life and liberty in the United States' Declaration of Independence. Jeremy Bentham believed that public policy should attempt to maximize happiness, and he even attempted to estimate a "hedonic calculus". In the United States, there is no explicit policy that requires the rulers to develop the physical and mental well-being of the citizens or hold the government agencies accountable for their performance against specific measures or metrics of well-being. Until 1972 there was no formal government policy, anywhere in the world, that placed happiness and well-being as a main criterion for public policy decision making.
  1789- France adopts the Declaration: It emphasizes happiness as a fundamental right and universal goal.
  The following is a chronological list of happiness economics and well-being indices:
  1972 – Bhutan's former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, introduced the Gross National Happiness (GNH) philosophy and its four development pillars at an international conference.
  2005 – Med Jones of the International Institute of Management introduced the first GNH Index and Global GNH Index Survey. The GNH Index, also known as Gross National Well-being (GNW) Index framework served as the first integrated objective (economic) and subjective (happiness) socioeconomic development framework. Prior to the GNH Index, there were few development indices that improved upon the gross domestic product (GDP), but did not measure happiness. For example, the Genuine Progress Indicator was focused on the environmental cost of economic development, then later (in 2006) it was updated to include similar measures to the GNH Index. Another development index is the Human Development Index (HDI) that originally focused on literacy and education but also did not measure happiness. The HDI now measures three basic dimensions of human development, health (as measured by life expectancy at birth), overall knowledge level (as measured by the literacy rate), and standard of living (as measured by GDP per capita for a given year). Among the criticisms of the HDI is the complaint that it  is a mixture of stock measures (life expectancy at birth and literacy rate) and a flow measure (GDP per capita for a given year).  To overcome this criticism, Hou, Walsh, and Zhang (2015) proposed a new index called HDIF (Human Development Index Flow), in which they replaced life expectancy at birth by the under-five mortality rate (for a given year), and they also replaced the literacy rate by the gross primary school enrollment ratio for a given year).  They calculated both the HDI and the HDIF for many countries and found that "the HDIF and the HDI tend to converge for wealthy countries and diverge for poor countries, especially those with low HDI rankings". The development performance of poor countries improved using the HDIF while the performance of the wealthy countries declined.
  2006 – The Genuine Progress Indicator was updated from a green measurement system to a broader concept that included quantitative measurement of well-being and happiness. The new measure is motivated by the philosophy of the GNH and the same notion of that subjective measures like well-being are more relevant and important than more objective measures like consumption. It is not measured directly, but only by means of the factors which are believed to lead to it.
  2007 – Thailand releases Green and Happiness Index (GHI).
  2008 – French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a Happiness Initiative similar to GNH, calling for the inclusion of happiness and well-being among the criteria for national governance policies. He commissioned three prominent economists, Joseph Stiglitz (USA)
caption: "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product" by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan. Slogan on a wall in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts
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