Is the happiness index a good idea?

Our writers debate the pros and cons

NO

Phillip Hodson, Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

The Government is about to start asking questions about our happiness in its General Lifestyle Survey – the continuous survey of households, families and people in Britain that it uses for planning and policy. But as a therapist, I think this bid to officially monitor happiness is unworkable. We need to make our own decisions if we expect to be called adults. And no one can tell you how to be happy but yourself. In fact, I’ve spent my entire professional life trying to help clients evade other people’s definitions of happiness!

A client once asked me what happiness is. I said: “Are you well? Does anyone like you? Can you sleep at night? Do you do any meaningful work? Then why would you not call yourself happy?” This seems to me to be about as far as you can go in making generalisations about joy. If someone wants to harden this into an index, or a series of tick boxes, they turn themselves into your nanny. What’s more, a happy life needs contrast. I suspect the majority of us would become miserable if forced to smile all day like the cast of The Truman Show. There’s no pleasure if there’s never any pain. Indeed, always looking on the bright side may do more harm than good because it can stop you from confronting your problems.

In the end a happiness index is just psychologically untrue. People aren’t simpletons but full of paradox. My father used to say that he was never happier than during the Second World War. But that doesn’t mean he thought another war would cheer him up.

YES

Janice Turner, columnist and feature writer for The Times

I’m wary of a Government championing a happiness index just as it inflicts the true misery of cuts and redundancies, but ‘What makes us happy?’ is a question we have put off too long.

Ever longed for a hot new car, a ‘must-have’ dress or bag, slapped it on your plastic, then having got it home felt, well, rather empty? It neither quelled your free-floating dissatisfaction nor, except fleetingly, made you happy. It was, after all, just a thing.

This cycle of desire, spend, disappointment was the essence of the boom years. Customers in discount stores scooped up armfuls of garments, made for pennies by distant workers, knowing they’d barely wear them once. During that decade, shopping became more than our national pastime: to participate in society was to consume. And big spending made our GDP – a prime economic indicator – soar. We were ‘richer’. Or were we?

That credit bubble popped and as we pay it off, maybe it’s time to measure our lives in more than consumer goods. Family life is not enhanced by a gerbil wheel of two parents working excessive hours because they fear letting kids down if they can’t provide the latest goods. After all, spending time with people who love them is what makes children happy.

Britain scores well below other western societies in terms of satisfaction with our lives. But look around: Scandinavia is not shopping-obsessed, in Italy family meals are precious, in France work breaks for lunch with friends. Lately we have sacrificed so much pursuing material wealth. The happiness index will make us think hard – was it worth it?

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