Why happiness can not be indexed
July 15, 2006There are so many bad global ratings out there. In the last 15 years every political flavor (including us libertarians) available has invented a global index of sorts to prove their political flavor is best.
The latest such index is The Happy Planet Index by the green and left centered New Economics Foundation. It has received an awful lots of press and the blogosphere has been busy talking about why Vanuatu and Colombia rate above the UK and the US.
No one has really focused on why the numbers are as they are. The study explains it pretty well, but no one in the press seem to be too worried about reporting that part. The news bites above are newsworthy due to it’s controversy without making things hard for the readers explaining how it is calculated. Hint, their life satisfaction factor is only one small part of the value of the happy index.
The Happy Planet Index is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The results are surprising, even shocking, but there is much to learn from what they show.
So as you can see it has very little to do with actual human happiness, but more about an environmental groups idea of the happiness of the planet.
The actual calculation is (life satisfaction x Life expectation)/ ecological footprint. You can see they explain things quite well.
This is generally the problem with all of these invented global indices. The index is itself pointless if you don’t read the method well, of course no journalist ever does so people go around with small sound bites, such as Colombia is happier than the UK.
I find generally speaking that any kind of index or study that attempts to put numbers on highly subjective things like happiness, freedom (as us libertarians tend to create global indexes about) and poverty. These things can not be quantified in numbers and tables and should not be. I think it is highly dangerous to believe in these as these are the kinds of studies that help put bad people in government.
Comments:
Well, there's certainly some truth to what you're saying but I mostly suspect it's a matter of words.
For example, you might object to a "freedom index" but you'll object less to a "political freedom index" and even less to a "fiscal burden index" (which would take into account tax rates for various activities and assets).
So, is it the same to live in a country with a low "fiscal burden index" with living in one with a high "freedom index"?
Obviously, no index can account for all aspect, and then there's the issue of the relative weights of various elements... but imperfect as they are, such crude tools allow us to evaluate performance and change. (having a "X index" of 3 doesn't say much but going from 3 to 7 in 4 years can say a lot)
On the other hand, your more specific critique of the use of "loaded" words such as "happiness" is basically correct. No serious scientists should use such dangerous labels. I'd rather have scientists make up new words than risk such misunderstandings.
Posted by: Gabriel Mihalache at July 16, 2006 07:45 PM
