We use measures of Gross National Product, Employment Rate, graduation rate, test scores and a myriad of other parameters to characterize how our country is doing. Political leaders rely on their past history of performance indicators to support their claims of excellent leadership and reasons to be reelected. Recently Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK initiated a program to begin measuring happiness. There has been much debate questioning why should we measure happiness when there are so many practical things to do and complete. Roger Cohen in today's New York TImes article ( here ) discusses the addition of the happiness quotient, 'Happinomics' to go along with the traditional mechanical measurements of economic performance..
As Cohen puts it, the founding fathers of the US guaranteed freedom in the constitution and allowed individuals to embrace 'the pursuit of happiness'. Polling these harder to measure topics such as happiness and wellbeing can help policy makers awareness of what's going on in people's lives.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment