Regardless of the motivation and intention behind it, the move to base government policy on measures of happiness is fraught with problems at every level, argues Mark D. White. Reorienting policy towards happiness suffers from problems of definition, measurement, and implementation

White, Mark D

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9/2/2014Basing government policy on happiness or well-being ismisguidedblogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/basing-government-policy-on-happiness-or-well-being-is-misguided/Regardless of the motivation and intention behind it, the move to base government policy on measures ofhappiness is fraught with problems at every level, argues Mark D. White. Reorienting policytowards happiness suffers from problems of definition, measurement, and implementation.The prospect of basing government policy on measures of happiness (or subjective well-beingas itis known in the academic parlance) is an appealing one for government leaders and citizens alike.At the most basic level, its rhetorical appeal cannot be denied: who can deny that happiness is agood thing? Ideally, focusing on happiness rather than narrower economic measures such asgross domestic product (GDP) would make policy more humane. It would avoid abstractions like income per capitaand emphasize who gets that income and what do they do with it. Fundamentally, it would steer policy towards whattruly matters to people rather than a rough, imprecise proxy for it.Unfortunately, few of these aspirations will be realised by reorienting policy toward happiness, which suffers fromthree problems: issues of definition, measurement, and implementation. Each of these problems is fundamental initself, and each successive one builds on the preceding.First, “happiness,” like “justice” or “beauty,” is a notoriously vague concept. Philosophers have struggled forcenturies to define it, and poets, novelists, and songwriters have tried to describe it, but no canonical statement hasyet emerged. Most economists and psychologists who study happiness acknowledge this difficulty and eitherspecify a meaning or leave it open for survey respondents to answer for themselves, both of which are fraught.The problem is that there is no way to ensure that researchers and research subjects, or policymakers and citizens,understand “happiness” in the same way. Each of us has a sense of what it means, but given the vagueness of theconcept, that understanding varies between different people as well as in different situations. If I ask my friend ifshe’s happy with her lunch or if she’s happy with her life, I’m asking about two very different things, never mind howshe might interpret my question differently from what I meant (especially in the latter case). If survey questions leavethe definition of happiness open, each respondent may be reporting on a different personal conception of happiness,and if researcher specify one conception of happiness, it will likely not correspond to what each respondent regardsas happiness. Either way, researchers do not get an accurate and unified picture of what people regard as theirhappiness or what matters to them.Second, measurement of happiness is difficult because of its essentially qualitative and subjective nature. Even ifthe definition of happiness were not an issue, accurate measurement would still be problematic because of howsurveys are designed. Typically, respondents are asked to report some version of their happiness on a numericalscale with descriptive labels attached to each step. For instance, the scale may go from one to five, with one labeled“very unhappy,” two “somewhat unhappy,” up to five, “very happy.” Sometimes the endpoints are signified as “themost [or least] satisfied you can imagine,” in an attempt to normalise the measure to each person’s lifecircumstances.There are numerous problems with this. For one, the descriptive labels themselves are vague; even if the definitionof “happy” were clear, modifiers such as “somewhat” and “very” are not, and mean different things to differentpeople. Also, the endpoints raise issues of their own: labels aside, does the lowest point signify the absence ofhappiness (which would seem like zero) or profound unhappiness (which would seem to merit a negative number)?Furthermore, people in different circumstances would have very different ideas about the best or worst life they canimagine, which turns an intended feature into a flaw. An heir to an industrial fortune may see the stars as the limit to1/2his life, while a dishwasher at a greasy spoon may have more modest dreams. This raises the much larger issue ofadaptation, the process by which people acclimate themselves to adverse circumstances and then report muchhigher levels of happiness than affluent researchers would expect.Translating a qualitative feeling such as happiness into a numerical measure is also highly problematic. The use of aunit scale (1, 2, 3, and so forth) implies that the difference between each unit is the same, as are measures of space,time, or temperature. But this means that the difference between one, “very unhappy,” and two, “somewhatunhappy,” would have to be precisely the same as the difference between two, “somewhat happy,” and three,“neither happy nor unhappy.” This may seem like a technical point, but performing even basic arithmetic operationson the resulting scores, such as averaging them and identifying percentage changes, requires that each interval beidentical. Some researchers go one step further and add scores from questions asking about different conceptionsof happiness altogether, which implies that step on all scales are identical. Ultimately, happiness is a feeling to bedescribed, not a quantity to be measured.Third, even if we could solve issues with definition and measurement, there are still serious problems regarding howto implement policy based on measures of happiness. These problems are more political than conceptual, butdemand a hard look at what the government would be trying to do with measures of happiness.For example, what would the goals of a happiness-based policy be? Would the government enact policies tomaximise gross domestic happiness, or would they choose a growth rate for it as they do for GDP? A growth ratewould be problematic due to the hedonic treadmill, another version of adaptation by which we work hard to reach ahigher level of happiness only to become accustomed to it, after which we work even harder in a futile attempt toachieve the same increase in happiness we thought we had! (This is related to setpoint theory, which implies that,to a large extent, each person’s baseline level of happiness is determined by genetics, which casts doubt ongovernment efforts to increase it.) Also, neither goal would account for inequality in realised happiness, which is ofno less concern than inequality of wealth. Adaptation is relevant here as well, because it is precisely those whoneed help the most who are most likely to report significant happiness despite meagre circumstances. Finally, howwill sacrifices in current happiness to invest in future happiness, such as going to medical school or training to be aballerina, be separated out of happiness measures that focus on the past or present but not the future?Regardless of the motivation and intention behind it, the move to base government policy on measures of happinessis fraught with problems at every level. Furthermore, these problems are not simply a matter of developing bettertools and techniques, but implications of the essential nature of happiness itself: vague, qualitative, and subjective.Happiness means something different to each person, in different circumstances, and at different points in his or herlife. And what’s more, it is not necessarily the most important thing to each person, who may care about the well-being of loved ones, the situation in Gaza, or public reception of the new Doctor Who—aside from the impact ofthese things on his or her personal happiness. When all is said and done, in addition to the numerous problems withthe concept, happiness may not be the right thing for government to focus on in the first place.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting. Featured image credit: CalebRoenigk CC BY 2.0About the AuthorMark D. White is chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY inNew York City. His latest book, on which this post is based, is The Illusion of Well-Being:Economic Policy Based on Respect and Responsiveness (Palgrave, 2014). 2/2

Basing government policy on happiness or well-being is misguided

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