Great post over at WorldChanging which goes through happiness maps in some detail. The guy who originally mapped it all (at the University of Leicester) reckons there is a strong correlation between happiness (or life satisfaction as it is often called in happiness science circles) and health. Or is it wealth? Ethan Zuckerman here looks at the data and reckons there are three groups of countries: the understandably happy, the understandably unhappy, and the surprisingly unhappy. There's very few in the surprisingly happy camp.....
GIB has covered this area quite a bit in the past (see happiness-related ideas here) and it's amazing to me that we still measure progress in primarily economic terms, despite there being no discernible upturn in life satisfaction/happiness as a result of more money. But perhaps that's because it's a long-term shift: looking at the rise of work-life balance on the agenda, at the priorities of new graduates/job-seekers, at ethical consumerism and social enterprise and venture philanthropy....we can see a gardual turn to a society that values more than money, and is beginning to understand what makes it happy.
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Posted by: Kermit Williams | January 24, 2008 at 07:29 AM