Happy Life Years Research Articles

Effect van de COVID-19 pandemie op geluk in Nederland

Abstract Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on happiness in The Netherlands In the media we read mainly about negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our subjective wellbeing, such as increased depression, anxiety and loneliness. There is less attention for possible positive effects and for this reason it is worth examining how the life-satisfaction of the Dutch population has developed during the pandemic. In the short run, this will help policy makers to balance loss of happiness against loss of lives and in the long run it will help to examine which policies have resulted in the lowest loss of happy life years. In this article, we describe observed effects on happiness in the Netherlands during the pandemic (until spring 2021) using three empirical approaches: 1) trend in subsequent survey studies, 2) analysis of a panel study, and 3) analysis of a dairy study in which mood during daily activities was measured. Average life-satisfaction declined by about 4% of which 3% between summer 2020 and spring 2021. Whereas in the early days of the pandemic, the Dutch population only reported a minor loss of happiness, the decline has become substantial at the end of the road.

Psychological Capital in Educational Context: Lifelong Learning and Beyond Hope

The world of work is constantly changing whereby innovation and challenges requires oneself to be competitive. Although, human capital and social capital are vital to the success, psychological capital (PsyCap) has been proposed as a new complementary concept that remains in success. Research proves that hope is a good predictor of subjective well-being. Promoting academic PsyCap helps achieve academic success. The author attempts to draw parallels to consider the construct of PsyCap that can predict educational success, substantiates the assumptions in light of results of survey “Psychological Perspectives on Perceived Hope”, and highlights the significant relationships between hope, PsyCap and other relevant variables that impact educational and future life success. These dynamics of lifelong learning, hope, and psychological capital needs further empirical clarification. The purpose of this paper is to present the local results, especially the assessment of the social and psychological aspects of hope in relation to lifelong learning. Accordingly, the paper has three aims: Firstly, what is the role of the demographic structure of the samples in enabling social change (optimism and enthusiasm, happy life years, self-efficacy) and hope of life (well-being, basic human needs, life satisfaction)? Secondly, what are the predictability of social change and hope of life? Thirdly, what are the correlation of social change and hope of life? These research questions capture broader social and psychological debates about the topics of lifelong learning, social exclusion, well-being, hope and psychological capital, and they also assist us to progress the discussions around the hope for a good life. SPSS (t-test, ANOVA, multiple regression analysis, canonical correlation analysis) is utilized to gather descriptive statistics.

Happy life expectancy in China

Utilizing multiple-wave data from Chinese General Social Survey and the life table method, this study assesses the happy life expectancy of Chinese population aged 18 and older over 2005–2015. We also use the decomposition method to further isolate the happiness effect and mortality effect on temporal changes and gender differences. The results suggest that, Chinese adults, in general, live a great proportion of their lives happily, and the happy life expectancy increases pronouncedly over time in both absolute and relative terms. A rapidly rising level of happiness provides the major contribution to the temporal increase in happy life expectancy. Women exceed men in the length of happy life expectancy, and the gender difference enlarges over time. This gender gap in happy life expectancy mainly reflects a mortality effect. The results also indicate that with the increase of age, there is an increasing proportion of happy life years lived among the Chinese elderly, which is in sharp contrast with the decreasing proportion of healthy life years lived by this population, as suggested by previous studies on health life expectancy. We conclude that a combination of healthy life expectancy and happy life expectancy can provide a fuller and more comprehensive reflection on people’s overall quality of life.

Good Societies, Financial Inequality and Secrecy, and a Good Life: from Aristotle to Piketty

Abstract In this paper we show that for a dataset of 105 countries, four candidate objective indexes (Human Development Index (HDI), Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), Social Progress Index (SPI) and Sustainable Society Index (SSI)) and one subjective index (World Happiness Survey (WHS)) of at least aspects of the quality of life or human well-being have good convergent validity among themselves and expected statistically significant negative correlations with Gini measures of wealth and income, and a measure of political jurisdictions’ institutionalized financial secrecy (Financial Secrecy Scores (FSS)). A measure of offshore wealth as a fraction of GDP (FOW) showed only a couple significant correlations with one overall quality of life index (SSI). When we combined the four objective indexes to the subjective index to create overall measures of the quality of life (including Happy Life Years (HLY)), the correlations among the indexes increased. Most of the correlations increased again when we used Gini indexes to create wealth-equality overall quality of life indexes and these correlations were higher on average than those among income-equality overall quality of life indexes. Combining results using 21 quality of life/well-being indexes, we rank ordered 105 countries from best to worst. The top 10 in order were Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. This is the first time anyone has built the array of index options presented here based on a handful of originals. We offer them as another potential starting point for the next generation of researchers.

The Effects of Globalization on the Environment

In multiple standard OLS regression models, we test the effects of 26 standard predictor variables, including the ‘four freedoms’ of goods, capital, labour and services, on the following indicators of sustainable development: avoiding net trade of ecological footprint gha per person, Carbon emissions per million US dollars GDP, CO2 per capita, Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Global footprint per capita, Happy Life Years, Happy Planet Index, and ln (number of people per mill inhabitants 1980-2000 killed by natural disasters per year+1). Our research shows that the apprehensions of quantitative globalization critical research are fully vindicated by the significant negative environmental effects of the foreign savings rate. High foreign savings are indeed a driver of global footprint, and are a blockade against a satisfactory Happy Planet Index performance. The New International Division of Labour (NIDL)-model (Froebel et al., 1980) is one of the prime drivers of high CO2 per capita emissions. MNC penetration, the master variable of most quantitative dependency theories, blocks environmental performance (EPI-Index) and several other socially important processes. Worker remittances have a significant positive effect on the Happy Planet Index, and Happy Life Years.

Smart Developmentt. An Essay on a New Political Economy of the Environment

In this book, we present a first empirical reflection on ‘smart development’, its measurement and its possible ‘drivers’ and ‘bottlenecks’. The very idea of ‘smart development’ was first proposed by Meadows (1992) and has not been really followed up to now in social science ever since. We first provide cross-national data, how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to ‘deliver’ a given amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. To this end, we first developed UNDP-type performance indicators from current standard international comparative, cross-national social science data on these six main dimensions of development and on the combined performance on the six dimensions (a UNDP type ‘human development index plus’). We then show the non-linear standard OLS regression trade-offs between ecological footprints per capita and their square on these six components of development and the overall super-UNDP development performance index, derived from them. The residuals from these regressions are our new measures of smart development: a country experiences smart development, if it achieves a maximum of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion, and the combination of them with a minimum of ecological footprint. We then look at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of this ‘smart development’, using standard comparative cross-national data, which operationalize standard economic, sociological and political science knowledge in international development accounting. We compare the predictive power of these standard predictors, using standard OLS stepwise regression procedures, based on IBM SPSS XXII. Apart from important variables and indicators, derived from sociological dependency and world systems theories, we also test the predictive power of other predictors as well, ranging from geography and achieved development levels to the clash of civilization models, feminist theories, migration theories, and the ‘small is beautiful paradigm’ in the tradition of Schumacher. Our estimates underline the enormous importance of the transfer of resources from the centre to the periphery, brought about by migration, with huge statistical observed positive effects of received worker remittances on smart human development, Happy Life Years, smart gender justice, smart R&D, and both formulations of the smart development index.Finally, we take up an issue, which has been very prominent in recent global public health debate. Following the path-breaking articles by Wilkinson and associates, income inequality has a very detrimental effect on life quality. But life quality also depends in a non-linear fashion from environmental data. Thus, the Wilkinson research agenda finds its proper place also in debates about ‘smart development’, but certainly, the weight of other variables, such as • Membership in the Islamic Conference• military expenditures per GDP• Muslim population share per total population• public education expenditure per GNP• UNDP education index• worker remittance inflows as % of GDPalso has to be properly taken into account.

Greater Happiness for a Greater Number: Did the Promise of Enlightenment Come True?

In the eighteenth century ‘Enlightened’ thinkers challenged the belief that happiness exists only in Heaven. They claimed that happiness is possible in earthly life and foresaw that greater happiness would be achieved using reason. Did this promise of greater happiness come true? Several scholars doubt that we have become any happier and some claim that happiness has declined. These critical claims are tested using the time trend data available in the World Database of Happiness, which cover the period 1950–2010 and involve 1531 data points in 67 nations yielding 199 time-series ranging for 10 to more than 40 years. The analysis reveals that happiness has risen in most nations. The average yearly rise in the 67 nations was +0.012 on scale 0–10, which equals a rise of one full point every 83 years. At this rate happiness must have improved by more than two points over the past two centuries and, together with increasing longevity, this denotes an unprecedented rise in happy life years.

Globalization, the Environment and the Future 'Greening' of Arab Politics

The pressures of globalization, rising ecological footprint and shrinking biocapacity and concomitant global value change will contribute towards an increase of the importance of environmental issues in the Arab world in the coming years. Without question, already the time series data from available indices – like the KOF-Index of Globalization (2015) and Ecological Footprint Network data on ecological footprint and biocapicity - all point in the direction that in objective terms the Arab World will be confronted by a synchronous increase of these phenomena in the coming years. In addition, the newly available opinion data from the recently released World Values Survey (6) for twelve members of the Arab League (Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Tunisia, and Yemen), containing almost 70% of the population of the countries of the Arab League show to us that membership rate environmental organizations, participation in environmental demonstrations and giving priority to protecting the environment over economic growth are already a factor in those countries. Their weight will increase in the years to come, given the general and very robust underlying tendencies. Our article analyzes the empirical relationship between rising globalization and ecological performance by establishing the global long-term, structural macro-quantitative determinants of environmental performance in the world system with cross-national data. In multiple standard OLS regression models, we test the effects of 26 standard predictor variables, including the ‘four freedoms’ of goods, capital, labor and services, whose weight will all increase in the Arab world in the coming years, on the following indicators of sustainable development - avoiding net trade of ecological footprint gha per person - Carbon emissions per million US dollars GDP - CO2 per capita - Yale/Columbia Environmental Performance Index (EPI) - Global footprint per capita - Happy Life Years - Happy Planet Index - ln (number of people per mill inhabitants 1980-2000 killed by natural disasters per year+1) Our research shows that the apprehensions of quantitative research, critical of neo-liberal globalization are fully vindicated by the significant negative environmental effects of the foreign savings rate. High foreign savings are indeed a driver of global footprint, and are a blockade against a satisfactory Happy Planet Index performance. The new international division of labor is one of the prime drivers of high CO2 per capita emissions. The penetration of economies by foreign direct investments by transnational corporations, which is the master variable of most quantitative dependency theories (MNC penetration), blocks environmental performance (EPI-Index) and several other socially important processes. Worker remittances have a significant positive effect on the Happy Planet Index, and Happy Life Years. In attempting to draw some cautious predictions for the Arab World, the article then evaluates the performance of the Arab countries in this context with our cross-national data and with our analysis of World Values Survey (6) data for the region. While the documented data for the region from the Yale/Columbia EPI Index, which is the best single-shot available global environmental quality indicator today, and the Ecological Footprint Network time series data about rising ecological footprint and shrinking biocapacity in the Arab countries clearly indicate the sharply mounting and pressing environmental policy priorities in the region, the “greening” of Arab civil societies towards a higher degree of environmental consciousness and activism already is also becoming a considerable factor. The overall publics in Qatar and Libya are in the lead, while in the other Arab countries, environmental policy issues will gain considerably in importance in the public mindset as well. Decision makers would be well advised to channel already now these future environmental debates and movements to be expected in a way compatible with the overall well-being, prosperity, democratization and stability of the region.

Reconsidering Migration, Globalization and Social Conditions in the World System

The present article is based on a 175-nation, 26 standard predictor variables study on the determinants of seven important indicators of social conditions on a global scale. The standard predictors cover all major development accounting theories today, including a) Demographic factors, b) Dependency and world systems approaches, c) Feminist paradigms, d) Geographic factors, e) Human capital formation, f) Integration into the European Union and the European Monetary Union, g) Migration, h) Military expenditures and military personnel rates, i) Neo-liberal approaches, and j) World religious factors. Our indicators of the social conditions relating to our globe include data about 1. Basic human needs satisfaction, 2. Gender inequality, 3. Inequality, 4. Life satisfaction, and 5. Unemployment. Our seven multiple OLS regressions, based on the SPSS statistical program and international comparative country-level data for the world in 2000 and after, take into account the non-linear trade-offs between development level and subsequent development performance, first associated with the name of the economist Simon Kuznets. They show the importance of migration in comparison to other, widely debated “drivers” and “bottlenecks” of social development. Received worker remittances per GDP have positive effects on life quality (life expectancy, life satisfaction, Happy Life Years), and gender relations (closing the political gender gap; closing the overall gender gap) in the labor exporting economies. There is no significant effect of any migration variable on the unemployment rate. Elements of other, more established approaches also receive qualified support.

Globalization as a Driver or Bottleneck for Sustainable Development: Some Empirical, Cross-National Reflections on Basic Issues of International Health Policy and Management

This article looks at the long-term, structural determinants of environmental and public health performance in the world system. In multiple standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, we tested the effects of 26 standard predictor variables, including the 'four freedoms' of goods, capital, labour and services, on the following indicators of sustainable development and public health: avoiding net trade of ecological footprint global hectare (gha) per person; avoiding high carbon emissions per million US dollars GDP; avoiding high CO2 per capita (gha/cap); avoiding high ecological footprint per capita; avoiding becoming victim of natural disasters; a good performance on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI); a good performance on the Happy Life Years (HLYs) scale; and a good performance on the Happy Planet Index (HPI). Our research showed that the apprehensions of quantitative research, critical of neo-liberal globalization, are fully vindicated by the significant negative environmental and public health effects of the foreign savings rate. High foreign savings are indeed a driver of global footprint, and are a blockade against a satisfactory HPI performance. The new international division of labour is one of the prime drivers of high CO2 per capita emissions. Multinational Corporation (MNC) penetration, the master variable of most quantitative dependency theories, blocks EPI and several other socially important processes. Worker remittances have a significant positive effect on the HPI, and HLYs. We re-analysed the solid macro-political and macro-sociological evidence on a global scale, published in the world's leading peer-reviewed social science, ecological and public health journals, which seem to indicate that there are contradictions between unfettered globalization and unconstrained world economic openness and sustainable development and public health development. We suggest that there seems to be a strong interaction between 'transnational capitalist penetration' and 'environmental and public health degradation'. Global policy-making finally should dare to take the globalization-critical organizations of 'civil society' seriously. This conclusion not only holds for the countries of the developed "West", but also, increasingly, for the growing democracy and civil society movements around the globe, in countries as diverse as Brazil, Russia, China, or ever larger parts of the Muslim world.

Migration, Openness and the Global Preconditions of ‘Smart Development

We present a first empirical reflection on smart development,’ its measurement, possible drivers and bottlenecks.’ We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to deliver a given amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. To this end, we first developed UNDP-type performance indicators on these six main dimensions of development and on their combined performance. We then show the non-linear regression trade-offs between ecological footprints per capita on these six dimensions of development and their combined performance index. The residuals from these regressions are our new measures of smart development (a country experiences smart development, if it achieves a maximum development with a minimum of ecological footprint). We then look at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of this smart development and compare their predictive power using stepwise regression procedures. Apart from important variables and indicators, derived from sociological dependency and world systems theories, we also test the predictive power of several other predictors as well. Our estimates underline the enormous importance of the transfer of resources from the center to the periphery, brought about by migration, with huge statistical observed positive effects of received worker remittances on smart human development, Happy Life Years, smart gender justice, smart R&D, and both formulations of the smart development index.

In praise of inequality?‘Happy Planet’ performance and its determinants

The public health profession has studied the drivers and bottlenecks of increased life expectancy and decreased infant mortality for a number of years. The essence of this dominant paradigm of high inequality leads to low life quality seems to suggest that inequality negatively determines a number of public health variables such as physical health, mental health, drug abuse and teenage births. Recent international research, connected with the ‘Happy Planet Index (HPI)’ seem to question the validity of this assertion. The main Happy Planet Organisation indicators are ‘Ecological Footprint’, ‘Happy Life Years’, and the derived HPI, which measures ecological efficiency, with which human wellbeing is delivered around the world. ‘Ecological footprint’ (global hectares/person [gha/cap]) is the one-catch, all-indicator of ecological strain caused by human activity. ‘Happy Life Years’ is an indicator that combines Gallup and World Values Survey data on individual feeling of overall happiness with average life expectancy. The Happy Planet Index calculates the ‘environmental price’ of human happiness. The best global HPI score is that of Costa Rica (76.1 out of 100). Of the 10 leading countries of the world, nine are in Latin America, a continent traditionally characterised by strong inequality. At first sight, the new ‘Happy Planet Index’ puts the R.G. Wilkinson school of thought (inequality as the scourge of humanity) on its head. It rather suggests a tough neo-conservative vision of society, corresponding to economics Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek, who maintained that markets, inequality and a free society interact with one another and that there should be no politically motivated blocks against inequalities in the name of ‘social justice’. Like it or not, our empirics seem to suggest that there is a tendency of rising inequality, going hand in hand with a rising Happy Planet Index performance. Happy Planet performance improves until a society reaches a staggering difference of about 1:30 between the richest 20% and the poorest 20%, and only some very high inequality Letters to the Editors

Costa Rica, Superstar? Some Reflections on the Global Drivers and Bottlenecks of the Happy Planet Index

For some years now, the Happy Planet Organization presents the so-called ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI), which is an index of measuring the trade-off between ecological footprint data and life quality (Happy Life Years, HLYE). Costa Rica emerges from these comparisons as the world’s ‘best practice nation’, using a minimum amount of natural resources to achieve a maximum of human happiness. So is Costa Rica the pathway for humanity? There are shortcomings in the formula, with which the index is calculated (Happy Life Years divided by Ecological Footprint per capita, and some constants added). Using a re-formulation, the global ranking with Costa Rica on top is indeed confirmed. We present some evidence on the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of our re-formulated Happy Planet Index (HPI) performance on a global scale: a wide variety of standard globalization variables have little influence on HPI performance. Big countries with large population resources perform somewhat better, and low military expenditures per GDP are a constraint on HPI performance. Beneficial effects are also wielded by received worker remittances. Efficiency tends to increase and then to decrease with rising development levels.

Globalization as a Driver or Bottleneck for Sustainable Development: General Tendencies and European Implications

This article looks at the long-term, structural determinants of environmental performance in the world system. In multiple standard OLS regression models, we test the effects of 26 standard predictor variables, including the ‘four freedoms’ of goods, capital, labour and services, on the following indicators of sustainable development • avoiding net trade of ecological footprint gha per person • Carbon emissions per million US dollars GDP • CO2 per capita • Environmental Performance Index (EPI) • Global footprint per capita • Happy Life Years • Happy Planet Index • ln (number of people per mill inhabitants 1980-2000 killed by natural disasters per year+1) Our research shows that the apprehensions of quantitative globalization critical research are fully vindicated by the significant negative environmental effects of the foreign savings rate. High foreign savings are indeed a driver of global footprint, and are a blockade against a satisfactory Happy Planet Index performance. The New International Division of Labour (NIDL)-model (Froebel et al., 1980) is one of the prime drivers of high CO2 per capita emissions. MNC penetration, the master variable of most quantitative dependency theories, blocks environmental performance (EPI-Index) and several other socially important processes. Worker remittances have a significant positive effect on the Happy Planet Index, and Happy Life Years.

Migration, Openness and the Global Preconditions of 'Smart Development'

In this article, we present a first empirical reflection on 'smart development,' its measurement, possible 'drivers' and 'bottlenecks.' We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to 'deliver' a given amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. To this end, we first developed UNDP-type performance indicators on these six main dimensions of development and on their combined performance. We then show the non-linear regression trade-offs between ecological footprints per capita on these six dimensions of development and their combined performance index. The residuals from these regressions are our new measures of smart development: a country experiences smart development, if it achieves a maximum of development with a minimum of ecological footprint. We then look at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of this 'smart development' and compare their predictive power using stepwise regression procedures. Apart from important variables and indicators, derived from sociological dependency and world systems theories, we also test the predictive power of several other predictors as well. Our estimates underline the enormous importance of the transfer of resources from the center to the periphery, brought about by migration, with huge statistical observed positive effects of received worker remittances on smart human development, Happy Life Years, smart gender justice, smart R&D, and both formulations of the smart development index.

De meeste mensen met psychische stoornissen zijn gelukkig

The positive psychology of mental disorders Rates of mental disorder are high in western countries and numbers of people seeking treatment for depressions are rising. This trend is commonly attributed to the perils of modern individualistic society. We argue that the fact that more people seek help for mental disorders, is not indicative for a harmful trend in society. Happiness is rising and is more evenly distributed. Even most people with a mental disorder are in a good mood. They profit from the favorable living conditions. However, it is also clear that a minority of the people with mental disorders are responsible for 85 % percent of the lowest levels of happiness of all citizens. The burden of the disorders in terms of lost happy life years is enormous, and this calls for continued focus on treatment and prevention. In this context it would be wise if positive psychologists would specifically dedicate themselves to raising happiness of people with mental disorders, a task that may be neglected if positive psychologists distance themselves from the old ‘negative’ psychology. Positive psychologists better not limit themselves to study the flourishing of mentally healthy people.

Medidas de la Felicidad Nacional Bruta

Happiness is rising on the political agenda and this calls for measures of how well nations perform in creating great happiness for a great number, analogous to measures of success in creating wealth, such as GDP. Happiness is defined as subjective enjoyment of one’s life as-a-whole and this can be measured using self-reports. Question on happiness are currently used in large scale surveys of the general population in nations. As a result we have now comparable data on happiness in 144 contemporary nations and time-series of 25 years and longer on 11 developed nations. These data can be aggregated in different ways: If the aim is simply greater happiness for a greater number of citizens, Average happiness (AH) is an appropriate measure. If the focus is on enduring happiness, it is better to combine average happiness with longevity in an index of Happy Life Years (HLY). If the aim is to reduce disparity among citizens a relevant indicator is the Inequality of Happiness (IH) in the nations as measured with the standard deviation. Average and dispersion can also be combined in an index of Inequality-Adjusted Happiness (IAH). Comparison across nations shows sizable differences on all these measures of gross national happiness and these differences correspond with societal characteristics that can be influenced by policy makers, such as freedom and justice. Comparison over time shows major improvement during the last decade.

Well-Being in Nations and Well-Being of Nations

Human societies cannot exist without human beings and human beings cannot exist without a society. Still there can be a conflict of interest between the individual and society and there are historical examples of societies prospering at the cost of its members, and examples of people thriving at the cost of society. The degree of conflict or synergy will vary over time. This begs the question: How it is today? To what extend does the well-being of contemporary nations go together with the well-being of their inhabitants? In a system theoretical perspective one can distinguish four kinds of being ‘well’: (1) good external conditions, (2) appropriate internal functioning, (3) positive external effects and (4) system maintenance. At the level of nations these aspects of well-being cannot be meaningfully combined in one measure, hence each aspect is measured separately. At the level of individuals a fairly comprehensive measure is how long and happy people live. Data was available for 92 nations in the early 2000s. Analysis of these data shows much correspondence between the well-being of contemporary nations and average well-being of citizens in these nations. This appears in strong correlations between Happy Life Years and (a) the position of the nation in the world system, (b) the functioning of public institutions in the nation, (c) the productivity of the nation, and (d) the stability of the system. There are plausible explanations for this connection, one is that modern society fits human nature fairly well and another that happy citizens make a better society. So, there is no great conflict between the individual and society, at least not at this moment.

Well-Being of Nations—A Cross-Cultural Perspective

The papers collected in this special issue were first presented at the International Symposium on the Well-being of Nations—A Cross-cultural Dialogue organized by the Graduate Institute of Philosophy, National Central University in Taiwan on November 5–6, 2006. The major objective of the symposium was to report and compare the well-being of nations under a cross-cultural perspective. The papers included here address issues of wellbeing in Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong from different perspectives, as well as the relationship of well-being of individuals and well-being of nations on a global level. Recently, there has been increasing media coverage of reports of global rankings of well-being of nations using different criteria of measurement. Behind these national wellbeing statistics, one interesting question that requires deeper thought is whether there is a harmonious alignment between the well-being of a nation and the well-being of its citizens. The paper by Ruut Veenhoven—‘‘Well-being in Nations and Well-being of Nations, Is There a Conflict Between Individual and Society?’’ aims to address this important question: Is there a conflict between the well-being of a nation and the well-being of individuals living in that nation? Veenhoven distinguishes four aspects of the well-being of a nation— good external conditions, appropriate internal functioning, positive external effects and system maintenance. Each aspect has to be measured separately because one measure cannot meaningfully capture all. A measure of Happy Life Year is used to measure an individual’s well-being. Analysis of the data from 92 nations reveals a close correspondence between the well-being of nations and well-being of citizens in these nations. This appears in strong correlations between Happy Life Years and the position of the nation in the world system, the functioning of public institutions in the nation, the productivity of the nation, and the stability of the system. Harmony seems to exist between individuals and society. The paper by Robert Cummins, Anna Lau, David Mellor and Mark Stoke, ‘‘Encouraging Governments to Enhance the Happiness of Their Nation: Step 1: Understand Subjective Wellbeing,’’ tries to connect the relationship of the knowledge of the well-being

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: Towards an Internationally Acceptable National Success Indicator

Amidst increasing attention to happiness studies by economists, the New Economics Foundation launched in July 2006 the Happy Planet Index (Marks et al. 2006). This is the ratio of the average happy life years (HLY) to the per capita ecological footprint of the country concerned. HLY is in turn the product of the average happiness (or life satisfaction) index and the life expectancy index. Some essential revisions to this index are proposed to reach an internationally acceptable national success indicator that aims positively at long and happy lives but negatively at the external costs of environmental disruption. Hopefully, this ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ will lead to some re-orientation of both the market and national governments towards something more fundamentally valuable.