Happy Planet Index Research Articles

The Misty Grail: The Search for a Comprehensive Measure of Development and the Reasons for GDP Primacy

ABSTRACTRecent decades have seen a flurry of new indicators to measure economic progress, but none of them has succeeded in replacing GDP. This article seeks to explain this outcome and to contribute to the debate about composite indicators versus a dashboard approach. To this end, it reviews some of the most popular alternatives to GDP (the Human Development Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator, the Happy Planet Index, and an environmentally corrected GDP), focusing on their conceptual foundations rather than on their statistical consistency as most of the literature does. It is shown that most of these measures are theoretically inconsistent; the exception is the environmentally corrected GDP, but since this too has failed to replace GDP, inconsistency must be only one reason behind the limited use of alternative measures. The author argues that the main reason for GDP's primacy is that GDP is better suited to reflect the goals of capitalist market economies. This implies that constructing composite indicators as alternatives to GDP will be pointless as long as the current preference system has not changed to include environmental or social goals. The author also suggests that for this purpose a dashboard approach, which provides different social groups with intelligible quantitative instruments, may be preferable to the use of composite indicators.

Influence of Peer and Parent-Child Relationships on the Suicidal Ideation of Adolescents

This study examined the influences of both peer and parent-child relationships on suicidal ideation in adolescents with a focus on interpersonal relationships in adolescence that can act as risks as well as protective factors for youth suicide. This study analyzed 5,440 middle and high school students drawn from data, the seventh Happy Planet Index of children-adolescent in Korea, and conducted a series of logistic regressions. The results are as follows. First, both direct and indirect involvement in the school violence affects suicidal ideation as a risk factor in peer relationships. However, the quality and quantity of close friends of adolescents do not represent a protective role against suicidal ideation insofar as they are exposed to school violence. Second, adolescents who live apart from one of their parents are vulnerable to suicidal ideation than those who live with two parents. Third, very poor parent-child relationships in adolescence are not necessarily associated with suicidal ideation in adolescents. Fourth, shared time or activities between parents and adolescents in terms of family meal times are more likely to reduce suicidal ideation in adolescents than the emotional characteristics (trustworthiness or a close relationship) of parents and adolescents. The findings provide implications that frequent contact and shared activities in terms of family dining may contribute to the prevention of adolescent suicide.

Improving the objectivity of sustainability indices by a novel approach for combining contrasting effects: Happy Planet Index revisited

Measuring complex and rather intuitive qualities such as sustainability requires combining many different measures together. These measures often quantify contrasting effects. The resulting composite index then also depends not only on the component indices but also on the way that these have been combined together. An example of such a measure is the Happy Planet Index (HPI) that aggregates information on positive qualities like life-expectancy and human well-being with negative ones like ecological footprint to rank countries according to their sustainability. However, since component indices are often mutually correlated and feature quite different distributions of entities ranked, elaborate rules are used in the process of combination. As a result, the resulting composite index may look somewhat contrived and its rankings may depend heavily on subjective parameters in the combination process. We propose a geometrically motivated parameter-free method for combining indices with contrasting effects together. The method is independent of the number of contrasting indices to be combined and eliminates mutual correlation between component indices by using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) analysis. As an example of its use, we revisit the Happy Planet Index and demonstrate the impact of adding new component indices to HPI on ranking nations by their sustainability.

Relationship between Happiness and Gender Inequality Index: Canonical Communality Analysis

Happiness is an important subject for policy makers in today’s world as improving happiness has been recognized as important for increasing the gross national product (GNP) of a country. Although the relationship between gender inequality and happiness has been investigated in previous studies, gender inequality has not been considered from the perspective of reproductive health, empowerment, and economic status. This study considers these perspectives at the country level and evaluates the relationship between gender inequality and happiness using the sub-indicators of Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Happy Planet Index (HPI) for canonical commonality analysis of 150 countries. Findings reveal a significant correlation between HPI and GII and that maternal mortality rate has a more unique effect on the canonical covariate compared to economic status and empowering women.

度量可持续性与生活质量的挑战 ——以一个加拿大小城市为案例的研究

Many set of indicators are currently available to measure sustainability and the quality of life or well-being of the people. However, choice of the set of indicators can widely affect the ranking of a place in terms of the quality of life of the people. For example, Costa Rica ranks 1st in terms of the 2012 Happy Planet Index, but it ranks 69th in terms of the Human Development Index. The goal of this paper is to design a robust mechanism by combining several methodologies to assess the quality of life in a place. We used a small Canadian city, Kamloops, for our case study. This 311 square km city in Interior British Columbia has a population of about 87,000. MoneySense ranked it 44th and 64th best places to live in Canada in 2012 and 2013 respectively. The index that is too sensitive to annual fluctuations of a few indicators could be good for understanding short-run quality of life changes, but might not necessarily reflect the level of well-being and its sustainability in a place. In this paper, we have defined a methodology to select an appropriate set of indicators for Kamloops that would measure the average quality of life and its sustainability. With hundreds of global and regional quality of life and sustainability indicator initiatives, and many available methodologies, it is important for any city to choose the appropriate indicators and evaluation methods. Economists often use estimated monetary values of desired indicators to compute Genuine Progress Indicator, or such other quality of life or composite sustainability indices. Natural scientists, on the other hand, use only a few physical indicators for environmental sustainability assessment. We believe that both monetary and physical indicators are important components of any quality of life index, and therefore, have to be part of a comprehensive sustainability plan. A data aggregation method has been suggested in this paper for computing relatively more composite indices from the large number of quality of life and sustainability indicators. The absence of reliable and adequate data is a serious challenge in measuring the desired indicators. Due to data constraints, a complete assessment of the average quality of life and its sustainability in Kamloops is not possible at this time using our suggested methodology. However, the proposed methodology and the data compiled for this study are steps forward to a complete and systematic accounting of well-being, happiness, income, wealth, and sustainability indices for Kamloops. We have assessed the current Kamloops Sustainability Plan based on our proposed criteria. It is expected that this study will make different stakeholders in the City of Kamloops re-think about their sustainability plans, and will help contribute to make Kamloops a better place to live. The methodology recommended in this paper is general enough to be used for quality of life and sustainability assessment in any place.

Measuring Subjective Happiness by Newly Developed Scale in Tehran, Iran

Background: Happiness as one of the main positive health indicators has drawn more attention in recent years among policy makers and health system managers. There are few studies performed to measure happiness in population-based settings in Iran. In response to this need, our study tends to assess Iranians subjective happiness in Tehran, Capital city of Iran. M aterials and Methods: Present study was conducted in Tehran, Capital of Iran, with more than 7 Million populations in January 2013, using a two-step approach. In first step c conceptual framework of Iranians’ happiness was developed. In the second phase of study, a survey recruiting 700 participants was conducted. Stratified cluster sampling method was employed. Participants were recruited from all the 22 municipal divisions of Tehran as strata, proportional to the population size and its gender and age distribution. Happiness was measure by a 40-item questionnaire with scores ranged among 40 to 200. R es ults: Conceptual framework of Iranians’ happiness based on reviewed documents and consensus building process was the product of first step. At second step, from a pool of 700 persons, 696 (97%) agreed to participate and filled out the questionnaire completely. The mean of happiness score was 143.9 (95% confidence interval, 142.5 to 145.4). The results show that the happiness score of jobless people (135.1, 95%CI: 128.1-142.0) and widowed singles (126.6, 95%CI: 113.0-140.2) were significantly lower than other corresponding groups. There was no significant association between gender, age group, educational level as determinants and happiness. Conclusion : Happiness level of Tehranians is somewhat higher than the moderate level. This finding is consistent with findings of other conducted studies in country. However, it is not consistent with some of international reports of happiness, For instance, Happy Planet Index. Due to inadequate information, it is necessary to conduct more research to measure subjective happiness and its determinants, specially, in a nation-wide approach .

Determining The Relationship Between Happiness And Human Development: Multivariate Statistical Approach

It has been understood that it is not enough to consider just certain macro-economic indicators to determine the development level of countries. Human Development Index (HDI), which is a part of the Human Development Report (HDR) published by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a complex index prepared for this end with a focus on education and health as well as income. Yet, once it was realized that this index had certain limitations, some other indices were created. Happy Planet Index (HPI), which was first used by New Economic Foundation (NEF) in 2006, is one of these indices. In this study, canonical correlation analysis, a multivariate statistical method was applied to examine the relation between HDI and HPI calculated for 150 countries. The empirical findings of the study have revealed that there is a very strong and meaningful canonical relation between HDI and HPI.

Well-being in the Czech Republic in an Aggregate Perspective

Abstract The article assesses well-being in the Czech Republic compared to other Visegrad countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland) and neighbouring Germany and Austria. By employing various approaches designed by several international organisations it takes an aggregate perspective to assess both the current well-being and its sustainability into the future. All employed indicators that relate to current well-being evaluate the well-being in the Czech Republic as moderate among the OECD countries. The results indicate that the position in well-being rankings improves with the growing number of dimensions or subjective factors included in the well-being measure, mainly due to the reduction in relative importance of income dimension and higher emphasis on the multidimensionality and complexity of well-being. In the case of sustainability, large differences can be identified in evaluation stemming from Happy Planet Index and Sustainable Society Index perspective. Although both of them agree on unfavourable situation as regards environmental sustainability in the Czech Republic, different accent on economic area alters the final result substantially. The analysis shows that for any well-being assessment, the choice of indicators is crucial and a large portion of caution is necessary when interpreting these.

Determinants of Corruption Perceptions: Transitional vs. Developed Economies

In this paper we explore relationships between corruption perceptions and such characteristics as the size of shadow economy, GDP per capita, well-being, the Happy Planet Index (HPI), and quality of institutions. Special attention is paid to the comparison of transitional economies with countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, and developed countries. It is shown that irrespective of whether the economy is developed or transitional, negative dependence of corruption perceptions on shadow economy switches to positive if the size of the shadow economy increases over 15% of the ocial GDP. After the shadow economy passes 45%, the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ceases to respond to growth of the shadow economy. Our estimates conrm that transition in countries is accompanied by growth of GDP per capita and a decrease in the level of corruption perceptions. For these reasons, transitional countries and countries where transition is over belongs to dierent clusters according to these indicators. This is not true for well-being and

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.

Are the variables used in building composite indicators of well-being relevant? Validating composite indexes of well-being

This paper explores the relevance of the variables that define well-being and human progress and makes a quantitative inquiry into the validity of three of the well-known and well-documented composite indicators of well-being: the Human Development Index (HDI), the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). After choosing the key variables that describe most of the objective and subjective dimensions of well-being, we perform cluster analysis to come up with an optimal grouping of countries based on their multidimensional performance on well-being. A comparison of the classifications obtained with the three indexes invalidates the HPI, confirms results obtained for the HDI, and validates for the first time the LPI as a reliable measure of well-being. The optimal cluster structure yields robust results, which correct the rank discrepancies between the HDI and LPI for a large number of countries. It also proves that a robust ranking of countries based on multidimensional well-being can be achieved with a relatively small number of variables, which mitigates the risk of including variables that are not reliable and/or not available for a significant number of countries. The fact that cluster analysis generates results based on similarities between observations and not on computed values based on the aggregation of variables helps overcome problems that may occur due to the distribution of variables and increases its value as a validation method. Therefore, validation results achieved through cluster analysis are more robust and help to achieve a good check of the validity and relevance of the composite indexes, provide an objective perspective that can guide policy-makers and the public in making a fair assessment of actual levels of well-being, and avoid unfounded claims that may overstate it and delay or postpone measures to increase it.

Measurement of National Well-being and Korean National Well-being

GDP per capita has been used as a measure of national well-being. While national income increases, national well-being has not improved in many countries. So alternative measure of wholistic human life is needed. In result, several indicators of well-being such as Human Development Index, Happy Planet Index, and OECD Better Life Index have been suggested. Which measure is most accurate? That is very difficult to answer. But OECD Better Life Index is proper, because it includes more aspects of human development than HDI, and subjective well-being.BR How is Korean national well-being? Korea’s ranking is 12th in terms of HDI, 30th in terms of PPP GDP per capita, 27th in terms of OECD Better Life Index, 41st in terms of World Happiness Report 2013.BR To improve national well-being, at first, economic growth and equitable income distribution are necessary, and specific policies are also needed to improve health(mental and physical), job security, and environment protection.

Examining patterns of sustainability across Europe: a multivariate and spatial assessment of 25 composite indices

Nearly all societies have now committed themselves to sustainable development by integrating some form of environmental quality, social equity, and economic welfare into their day-to-day activities. As such, there remains a strong political desire for the comprehensive assessment of conditions that evaluate the current status, measure progress, and help set future development goals. Indicators have been nominated as universal tools for progressing sustainable development across scales; however, there remains no consensus regarding the best approach to their design or use. While several studies have investigated the associations between indicators of sustainable development, few have directly addressed the question of how multiple measures can be used simultaneously to assess sustainability regionally. Building upon previous studies, this paper presents a quantitative and spatial assessment of 25 multi-metric indices across 36 European nations. The goals of this research were (1) to increase understanding of indicator complexity and (2) provide an applied example of their simultaneous use for regional assessment. Global Moran’s I-test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) analysis were used to test spatial autocorrelation and multicollinearity, respectively. From the 25 composite indices, an overall rank was also provided for each country. Lastly, Ward’s cluster analysis was used to create country bundles of similarity. Our findings revealed that environmental performance index, global information networking institute coefficient, and happy planet index were numerically and spatially random. Cluster analysis revealed a four-bundle solution, while Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden ranked highest. This approach shows promise for systematically describing, visualizing, and monitoring sustainable development at the continental scale.

Transformation of theoretical-methodological approaches and methodical tools of the individual and territory welfare diagnostics. Part 1. From spreading to the alternative diagnostics approaches (background)

This article presents an evolution of theoretical and methodological approaches to the welfare study. Existing theories of wellbeing are grouped according to accounted method of goods and resources distribution among society members. As a welfare future as a category we highlight objective (measured) and subjective (estimated) components. Based on the analysis of scientific literature we determine the ratio of individual and social welfare. The main differences between the categories of “ welfare†and “wealth†are given. The main difference consists in multidirectional changes of welfare and wealth for an increase (decrease) in income of the individual (country). In this article we present an analysis of modern approaches to the definition of welfare: state, institutional and expendable approach. The welfare level estimation is complicated due to the need to consider the subjective component. The article provides an analysis of existing approaches to quantitative welfare evaluation ranging from the most common techniques (HDI, GDP) to alternative techniques (Happy Planet Index).Methodological devices are structured by levels of welfare assessment objects (world, country, region, people). Based on the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of methods we can conclude that the most reliable method is a comprehensive approach, which includes economic, environmental, social, vital and infrastructure indicators. The author’s approach to the formation of a complex methodological tool for individual and territory welfare estimation is presented in this article.

Ekonomia wobec poczucia szczęścia

W dyskusji nad poczuciem szczęścia swoją obecność mocno zaznaczają nauki ekonomiczne, przy czym poglądy formułowane przez ekonomistów uwzględniają również osiągnięcia badaczy z innych dyscyplin naukowych. Celem artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie: Czy pomiar szczęścia w ogóle jest możliwy?W artykule przybliżono podstawowe tezy oraz dyskusyjne zagadnienia, którymi zajmuje się ekonomia szczęścia (economics of happiness). Pojęcie „szczęście” nie jest jednak jednoznacznie zdefiniowane, a jego pomiar nadal budzi wiele dyskusji i kontrowersji. Jednakże interdyscyplinarne światowe badania wypracowują mierniki wskazujące na poziom szczęścia, a tym samym stwarzają podstawy do opracowywania rankingów najszczęśliwszych społeczeństw na świecie. Indeksy szczęścia często powiązane są z oceną jakości życia. W artykule uwagę zwrócono na następujące wybrane wskaźniki oceniające poziom szczęścia i zadowolenia, jak również jakość życia w społeczeństwach: World Value Survey WVS, Gallup World Poll (GWP), Social Progress Index SPI, Happy Planet Index HPI i Better Life Index BLI.Na podstawie rozważań zawartych w artykule można stwierdzić, że istnieją wskaźniki szczęścia, ale nie pozwalają one na uzyskanie jednoznacznych wyników. Żaden ze sposobów, którymi się oblicza poziom szczęścia, satysfakcji lub jakość życia, nie jest w pełni trafny, rzetelny i wystarczający. Sposoby opisu szczęścia i jakości życia w społeczeństwach powinny być zatem traktowane komplementarnie, powinny uzupełniać się i wzajemnie korygować.

Going Beyond the Theory: Are the Variables Used in Building Composite Well-Being Indicators Relevant?

This paper takes stock of the current state of affairs in constructing overarching well-being and progress indicators, which attempt to replace the traditional GDP-based measures of economic well-being. A critical review of two widely used overarching indicators, the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI) is performed by matching relevant key explanatory variables with their actual quantitative explanatory power. Their explanatory power is further examined by matching the existing HDI and HPI country classifications with a classification carried out on the variables that are statistically significant using specific data mining /machine learning tools and measures. Substantial cross-correlations for many explanatory variables with sound theoretical foundations indicate possible redundancies in their concomitant use. A clustering of countries based on selected relevant explanatory variables validates HDI results and confirms the limited explanatory power of HPI.

Aggregate indices for identifying environmentally responsible nations: an empirical analysis and comparison

Environmental and sustainable development indicators have proliferated since the Rio Earth Summit. This paper attempts to evaluate five indices developed in recent years: the Sustainable Society Index, Happy Planet Index, Environmentally Responsible Happy Nations Index, Responsibility–Capacity Index and Sustainability Index by Fuzzy Evaluation. These indices aggregate information about environmental and development indicators. A comparison of the empirical values of the indices reveals that they do not provide a consistent picture and that the aggregation methods are subjective and debatable. Nevertheless, they all show that the majority of nations in the world need to re-examine their development policies.

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.

Beyond Gross National Product: An Exploratory Study of the Relationship between Program for International Student Assessment Scores and Well-being Indices

Because national intelligence is a crucial predictor of national wealth, the potential for international test scores to serve as a proxy measure of national cognitive capabilities has intrigued educational researchers. However, national wealth indexes, such as GDP or Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), are of limited use as indicators of quality of life. Since the late 20 th and early 21 st century, Europeans have been taking the lead in the movement of going beyond GDP by taking social and environmental indicators into account while measuring national progress. Guided by European principles, this study utilizes two indices, Human Development Index (HDI) and Happy Planet Index (HPI), to investigate the extent to which international test scores might predict national well-being. This exploratory study, utilizing correlation matrix, cluster analysis, and conditional regression, found that Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores collected in the year 2000 are a significant predictor of national well-being measured by HDI and HPI approximately a decade later. However, when cultural and geopolitical factors were taken into account, it was found that this relationship was not consistent across different subcomponents of HDI and HPI, and across different regions of the globe.

Happy Planet Index

Nurses and other healthcare professionals are generally conscious of the wider state of the planet and will welcome the Happy Planet Index website – providing global data on human wellbeing and our environmental impact.