Measurement of happiness index

First, make clear the exact meaning of happiness index.

When investigating people's happiness index, the most economical and effective method is to let people make a direct evaluation of their subjective happiness. This kind of thinking and practice may be of some significance to the investigation of individual happiness experience, but it is not helpful to reveal the common social and psychological phenomena hidden in happiness, because the individual characteristics of happiness experience determine that different individuals have different happiness meanings, and the cultural differences of happiness experience determine that the happiness meanings of groups in different cultural backgrounds are not the same. Investigating happiness index under the vague concept of happiness will lose the basis of describing and comparing happiness, thus losing the maneuverability and practical value of research. Foreign early happiness index researchers were wary of this "trap" from the beginning. They prefer to define happiness as satisfaction to ensure the operability of happiness index research. Therefore, the overall life satisfaction and satisfaction in specific areas of life (for example, economic situation, work situation, family life, social interaction, leisure activities, living environment, etc. ) has become the main indicator of happiness. This research idea was obviously influenced by cognitive psychology which was in the limelight in the middle of last century, and placed the investigation of happiness on the basis of individual's cognitive evaluation of the satisfaction degree of their own life needs. This research orientation has basically dominated the study of happiness index for more than half a century. Other researchers try to grasp happiness from emotional experience, and happiness is equal to happiness. Because of the greater relationship between emotional factors and mental health, this research orientation has also been given more mental health color. There are also some researchers who focus on the development of personal potential and the realization of value. They regard the degree of individual self-realization as the core content of measuring people's happiness, and factors closely related to personal values such as autonomy, environmental control, personal growth, life purpose and self-acceptance become important components of happiness. In their view, sense of value is the core of happiness. Generally speaking, different research orientations reveal some characteristics of happiness from specific aspects, but they all have their own shortcomings. Some foreign researchers have realized this and tried to integrate different research orientations, but so far they have not achieved satisfactory results.

We believe that the study of happiness index should first go beyond the concept of "happiness". From the origin and purpose of the study, happiness index can be regarded as the core index reflecting people's subjective quality of life. On the subjective quality of life, we integrated the previous studies on happiness and put forward the viewpoint of experiencing happiness. According to this view, happiness is an individual's positive psychological experience of his own existence and development, which is produced by the objective conditions that people have and the value of people's needs. The meaning of experiential happiness can be understood from two aspects: form and content. Formally speaking, happiness is a psychological experience. This kind of experience is not a fleeting emotional state, but a practical and stable positive psychological feeling based on subjective or unconscious self-reflection. From the content, happiness is a positive state of existence that people experience. This experienced living state is not only influenced by the development of individual society, but also has distinct cultural characteristics. Happiness is an individual's psychological experience, but the happiness index reflects a social fact, or a social phenomenon, and reflects the change degree of the subjective quality of life of the general public or a specific social group in a specific period. According to this research idea, we adopted the method of combining logical analysis and factor analysis, and compiled a measurement tool and evaluation index system suitable for the current happiness experience of China people through interviews and questionnaires. This evaluation system includes contentment experience, mental health experience, growth and development experience, social confidence experience, target value experience, self-acceptance experience, interpersonal adaptation experience, physical health experience, psychological balance experience and family atmosphere experience. Each dimension can be assigned according to a certain standard, and on this basis, it can be summed up to get a score that reflects people's happiness level in a specific period. If we take the average score of people's happiness experience sampling survey in a certain year as the basic point value and compare it with the average score of sampling surveys in other years, we can get the happiness index that reflects the change degree of people's subjective quality of life.

Second, the connotation and significance of the policy happiness index

Whether the happiness experience can become a practical policy goal depends on how much the policy can affect the people's happiness experience. In previous studies on happiness, researchers put forward a theory that personality determines happiness. According to this theory, people's happiness is steadily influenced by personality traits. For example, empirical research shows that extroversion and neuroticism have great influence on happiness, extroversion is positively related to positive emotions, and neuroticism is significantly related to negative emotions. If this explanation holds, people's happiness is largely determined by their personality, and policy intervention can play little role. However, other researchers have found that there is a strong positive correlation between the wealth of a country or region and the happiness level of people, and the correlation coefficient is roughly between 0.60 and 0.70. Although this research result cannot infer that people's income and wealth determine their happiness level, it can at least enlighten us that the conditions for survival and development that a country can provide for its people are closely related to their happiness experience. The conditions for people's survival and development are exactly what policies can pay attention to and play a role in. In a socialist country like ours led by the China * * * Production Party, the Party has no special interests except the interests of the working class and the broadest masses of the people. The party always puts the interests of the masses first. This determines that our policy choice must put people's interests first. In the process of formulating various policies, it is inevitable to regard seeking happiness for the people and providing them with the best possible conditions for survival and development as the value standard of social development. At present, the people-oriented Scientific Outlook on Development proposed by the CPC Central Committee and the goal of building a harmonious socialist society all reflect this value orientation.

It is of great practical significance to take happiness index as a policy goal. First of all, happiness index is an important indicator to measure the progress and development of a society. To measure the progress and development of a society, the most fundamental criterion is whether this society can well meet the people's survival needs, provide people with a broad space for free development, and adhere to the people-oriented social development goal. Judging from this standard, it is obviously not enough to use GDP as the core index to measure social progress and development in the past, which may lead to the choice of social policies to a certain extent, which is also the reason why people try to revise or supplement this index. Happiness index, which reflects people's subjective quality of life, is a highly humanized index, which can just make up for the deficiency of GDP index and measure the overall progress and development of society. Secondly, happiness index is an important indicator to monitor the benign operation of a society. A well-functioning society must strike a certain balance between economic and social development and the improvement of people's quality of life, which has attracted the attention of early modern western countries since the middle of the 20th century. According to the understanding of the promoters of quality of life, quality of life is essentially a subjective experience. As a modern backward country, we should learn from the experience and lessons of developed countries in this regard, and realize the all-round progress and benign development of society while moving towards modernization. Thirdly, happiness index is an important basis for social policy adjustment. In our country, policy makers pursue the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people, without any self-interest. Therefore, the test of our policy can only be whether the people support it or not, whether the people are happy or not, and whether the people agree or not. The people's personal feelings are the basis for us to formulate and adjust various policies. Especially at present, China society is still in the period of economic transition and social transformation. We should pay close attention to the impact of major policies on people's overall happiness, pay attention to the differences and trends of urban and rural residents' happiness, pay attention to the happiness of different social interest groups, and fully consider the coordination and unity of development speed, reform efforts and people's happiness.

At present, building a harmonious socialist society has become an important policy choice of the CPC Central Committee. The goal of building a harmonious socialist society shows us a happy and beautiful social picture: all the people do their best and live in harmony. "Do your best" can be understood as giving full play to people's potential, and "each in his place" can be understood as fully meeting people's basic survival needs. According to China's cultural tradition, "living in harmony" is also understood as a basic need of the people, that is to say, in the harmonious society we want to build, people's basic survival needs can be well met and people can give full play to their potential. According to the viewpoint of experiencing happiness, happiness reflects people's positive experience of their own living and development conditions. From this perspective, the intrinsic meaning of happiness index is highly consistent with the goal of building a harmonious socialist society.

Third, we should avoid misunderstanding the happiness index.

Judging from some people's understanding of happiness index at present, there may be some misunderstandings in taking happiness index as a policy goal, which should be avoided.

First of all, we should avoid regarding happiness index and GDP as an either-or relationship. Happiness index does not exclude GDP. Although the proponents of happiness index put forward a happiness index with GDP as the goal, it is very naive to think that happiness index can completely replace GDP. GDP, especially per capita GDP, despite many shortcomings, is still regarded as an important indicator of national economic growth and is often regarded as an important indicator of people's objective quality of life. Without the accumulation of wealth and the improvement of people's disposable income, people's happiness is out of the question. Some foreign researchers have found that in the past 40 years, the per capita disposable income in the United States has accelerated, but the happiness of the American people has hardly changed significantly. Some people assert that income and wealth have no influence on happiness. This view is biased. In a sense, we can also understand that people's needs and desires are rising, and it is precisely because the wealth of the country is growing that people's happiness is maintained at a certain level. Some western studies also show that the relationship between personal income and happiness is inverted U-shaped, which is based on the strong comprehensive national strength of western society and the high income and consumption level of residents. In a country with low per capita income, the relationship between personal income and happiness presents different characteristics. Through a sample survey of urban residents in a province in China, it is found that there is a positive correlation between per capita income and happiness, that is, the happiness of urban residents increases with the increase of per capita income. Therefore, at least in developing countries like ours, it is still too early to put forward the idea of replacing GDP with happiness index. Vigorously developing the economy, accumulating social wealth, and constantly improving people's income and consumption level are the prerequisites for developing various social undertakings, the foundation of social modernization, and the necessary conditions for improving people's subjective quality of life. On the other hand, as a post-modern country, we should learn from the modernization process of western developed countries and the past development of developing countries, including China, attach importance to GDP, not just GDP, and take GDP and happiness index as supplementary basis to examine social progress and development. This will undoubtedly be more conducive to the sound development of society and help us achieve our ultimate goal.

Secondly, we should avoid taking happiness index as the standard to evaluate cadres' political achievements. As mentioned above, happiness index is a comprehensive reflection of people's subjective quality of life with a set of indicators. On the whole, it reflects people's general psychological experience, so it is bound to be influenced by many factors such as long-term and short-term, macro and micro, subject itself and external environment. This characteristic of happiness index determines that it is mainly used to measure and evaluate the progress and development of a specific society and its benign operation. At this point, it also reflects the difference between satisfaction and happiness. Because satisfaction can be targeted at specific people and things, it is feasible to establish a scientific satisfaction index system, extract representative samples of evaluation subjects and evaluate a single evaluation object according to certain principles. In a sense, the satisfaction index can also be used as an important basis for the assessment of cadres' political achievements. It is worth mentioning that when used as an indicator to measure social progress and development, the main function of happiness index lies in diagnosis, not ranking; It is mainly to diagnose whether there are problems in policy choice and social operation, rather than comparing the development and progress of different societies, countries and regions. Therefore, when tracking the change of happiness index, we mainly look at whether our development deviates from our ultimate goal, rather than how many percentage points a country or region's happiness index has improved compared with other countries or regions, and what changes have taken place in the ranking, as we pay attention to GDP. Of course, necessary comparisons are also needed. For example, we can use happiness index to compare the subjective quality of life of urban and rural residents, different groups and different regions. The purpose of this comparison is to evaluate and review our original development ideas and policy choices, and provide the necessary basis for current policy adjustment and future policy formulation.

Thirdly, maximizing happiness should be avoided as a policy choice. Taking happiness index as a policy goal does not mean taking happiness maximization as a policy choice. The principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people" put forward by modern utilitarianism is only an abstract ethical proposition. If we try to regard it as a specific policy pursuit in the sense of economics or politics, it will inevitably evolve into a contemporary utopia. This fate has been confirmed by the efforts of welfare economists. Of course, we do not deny the possibility of maximizing happiness at the individual level. It is proposed to establish a new happiness discipline, the purpose of which is to help people find ways to maximize happiness. Undoubtedly, this kind of effort is based on individuals, and its practical value mainly lies in guiding people's life practice. Taking the happiness index as the policy goal is not to pursue the growth of the total happiness of the whole society by adjusting social policies and promoting social progress, but to examine the situation and changing trend of people's subjective quality of life through the happiness index, and then adjust the policy orientation to promote the all-round progress and benign operation of society. According to the viewpoint of experiencing happiness, the subjective quality of life reflected by happiness index will also change, because people's demand level will increase from low level to high level, and people's demand types will continue to be enriched. On the premise that the basic structure of happiness remains stable, some elements may be gradually excluded, or some new elements may be included. Even the influence weight of some remaining factors on subjective quality of life will change to some extent, so the stability of the basic structure of happiness is relative. In a sense, it is the relative stability of happiness evaluation indicators that determines that it is impossible for us to maximize happiness as a policy choice.

Fourth, understand the relationship between happiness.

1. Improving happiness index: the contradiction between primary distribution and redistribution.

From the perspective of post-modern economics, happiness is first of all value, not utility. Kahneman, the compiler of American National Happiness Index, advocates "returning to Bentham" in axiology, that is, from Marshall's utility to Bentham's value, to re-understand the happiness problem. Caught the root of the problem.

Utilitarianism is only an intermediate value and an intermediate means to realize value. The deviation between means and purpose is a typical feature of industrialization. Welfare economics bases well-being on the maximization of total utility, which fundamentally deviates from the core of value. In industrial society, the contradiction between happiness and utility is not obvious; However, for the information society, this has caused fundamental misleading. Money is not equal to happiness, and GDP is not equal to happiness, which is a prominent manifestation of the contradiction between happiness and utility.

Welfare economics lacks an independent micro-foundation with value as the core, and borrowing neoclassical utility as the micro-foundation has caused a misunderstanding. It seems that happiness can only be solved in the field of redistribution, but not in the micro-field and the primary distribution field. Huang Youguang is the representative of this thought.

In fact, redistribution is indeed an effective means to improve the happiness index, but only by thoroughly explaining happiness from the micro mechanism can the macro economy be established on the micro basis and people be happy.

2. The contradiction between utility and happiness in different income stages.

Then the second question came. Historical relativity of the relationship between utility and happiness. The existing index design is easy to fall into a misunderstanding, and the index reflecting utility is compared with the same happiness scale abstractly.

In fact, a large number of statistical calculations abroad show that the relationship between utility and happiness is different at different income stages. In the stage of solving food and clothing (food and clothing stage) and solving development problems (housing and transportation stage), the positive correlation between utility and happiness is obvious. However, in the Datong stage of solving the demand for self-realization (in foreign studies, the entry threshold is between 3000 and 8000 dollars), when the material demand shifts to the cultural demand, the correlation between utility and happiness is obviously weakened.

If this feature is not fully considered, the national happiness index will cause confusion when reflecting the happiness level of developed and underdeveloped areas. It is suggested that the whole country should be divided into three income areas and evaluated in a targeted manner. For areas that take the lead in realizing modernization, it is necessary to weaken the weight of tangible material indicators and highlight cultural content; For poor areas, "happiness" should still be defined as "money". This is a design concept based on the relativity of happiness.

3. The relationship between happiness and happiness

From the perspective of post-modern economics, the second biggest misunderstanding that may appear in the design of happiness index is to oppose personal happiness and social happiness, or at least ignore the micro-measurement of personal happiness.

Personal happiness understood by post-modern economics is not demonstrated from the perspective of psychological phenomena, but from the perspective of micro-phenomena. Social happiness is not only the total accumulation of personal happiness (which is different from Kahneman's point of view), but also the macro effect of social happiness under the action of the system through the micro mechanism of personal happiness. This is the inevitable requirement of people-oriented.

Under the condition of modernity, when we talk about personal happiness, one is to inappropriately associate it with the satisfaction of material desires. This is not correct. Under the condition of information society, personal happiness can transcend material desires and be linked to perceptual cultural needs. Second, it is linked to immediate interests and opposed to fundamental interests.

From a simple inference, it can be seen that people-oriented, just from modernity to post-modernity, from solving the problem of food and clothing and well-off under the conditions of industrialization to solving the spiritual pursuit of human beings under the conditions of information society, adopts perceptual people-oriented and embarks from the actual needs of specific individuals to bridge various social contradictions caused by human alienation.

On the other hand, if the guiding ideology of happiness index design only stays in the conclusion that "everyone can endure pain and society can be happy" in the industrialized era, such a national happiness index and target state are in globalization. American economist P Samuelson put forward a happiness equation: utility/desire = happiness index.

Desire is a lack of feeling and a desire for satisfaction, which is divided into five levels, from bottom to top: the first level is people's basic physiological needs, the second level is security needs, the third level is the needs of belonging and love, the fourth level is the needs of respect, and the fifth level is the needs of self-realization. Utility is the degree of satisfaction obtained from consumer goods, and it is the satisfaction of desire.

Judging whether a person is happy or not can be concluded from the answer that the dividing line is 1. Less than 1 proves unhappiness, equal to 1 or greater than 1 proves happiness.

If our desire index is high, but the utility we get in our current lifestyle is very low, we get a happiness index of 0.0, which means that our living condition is not good, which makes us feel unhappy. The severity of unhappiness is measured by numbers. The smaller the number, the less happy we are. If utility is higher than desire, the number we get is greater than 1, which proves that we are a happy person. Similarly, the index of happiness is also judged according to the number of scores. The bigger the number, the happier it proves.

Utility is also a feeling, and its size and existence are completely subjective. It varies from person to person, from time to time and from place to place. Desire is the desire to be satisfied, which is determined by one's concept. Everyone's desires have different levels because of different ideas, so happiness and misfortune vary from person to person in the same environment. So the result of this equation varies from person to person, that is to say, happiness is a subjective feeling, not an objective analysis.

If you want to judge whether you are happy or not, you can also use the above five levels of desire to divide. How many of these five levels do you want to reach? Now you have reached several levels. If you want to reach several levels, you are an unhappy person. If you have achieved more than or equal to what you have now, then you are a happy person. Class A indicators: life satisfaction related to cognitive categories, including satisfaction with living conditions (such as employment, income, social security, etc. ) and quality of life satisfaction (such as living conditions, medical conditions, education conditions, etc.). ).

Class B indicators: the mental state and the degree of emotional pleasure involved in the emotional category, including the degree of mental tension and mental state.

Class C indicator: refers to the harmony between people, individuals and society. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released an online testing tool called "Happiness Index" in Paris on May 24th, 20 1 1. Ordinary people can rank the importance of 1 1 factors such as material conditions and quality of life according to their personal concerns, and then the obtained index can be used to measure people's satisfaction with life, which can be carried out in 34 OECD member countries.

"Happiness Index" involves 1 1 factors: income, employment, housing, education, environment, sanitation, health, community life, institutional management, safety, work-family relationship and overall satisfaction with living conditions. When introducing this index, the Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurria, said that this measurement tool can be described as "pioneering". It took experts 65,438+00 years to get this result, but the index needs to be further improved. Price will also affect the happiness index.

Gurria said that it is not an OECD initiative to create a set of indicators to measure life satisfaction beyond gross domestic product (GDP), and many countries are also committed to this work. However, the "happiness index" published by OECD summarizes the data of 34 member countries, which is the highest in the international level; Moreover, it is characterized in that everyone can get personal life satisfaction data according to different contents of life, and personal choices can reflect the overall quality of life of a society and a country.

According to reports, it is the ultimate goal of this tool to let the government formulate public policies with reference to the happiness index in addition to GDP indicators. Gurria expressed the hope that this indicator can be used to test the responses of countries, and governments can also understand the needs of the people and make their public policies more targeted.

However, some experts said that "quantifying happiness" is not an easy task, let alone comparing countries with different national conditions.

OECD experts said that this tool will be further improved. Over time, more indicators may be considered, and the comparison target may be expanded to OECD partner countries-Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation and South Africa. There are five cups in front of you. Which cup will you pick up at first sight?

A cup of pure boiled water.

B.strong American hot coffee

C. Fresh milk just squeezed out

D. oolong tea newly brewed for the elderly

E. hot foamed tea

analyse

Option A: It belongs to the type of "want to forget everything", with a happiness index of 20%: this type of person is very independent, smart and knows what he wants.

B: It belongs to the "shocking type told to judges", with a happiness index of 40%. This type of person is very self-centered, but he loves each other very much and often bickers, but his heart is still heavy.

Choose C: a "willing type" with a happiness index of 55%: this type of person is very simple and kind, and as long as he likes each other, he will feel super happy.

Choose D: It belongs to the type of "you can't live without me", and the happiness index is 80%: this type of people, the definition of happiness is to be with their favorite children, which is very gratifying. His mentality is very mature now, and he can enjoy his work and daily life with ease.

Choose e: it belongs to the type of "only admiring the mandarin ducks but not the immortals", with a happiness index of 99%: this type of people don't need to communicate with their other half in words, and the tacit understanding between them is incomprehensible to outsiders, and they can often be understood with one eye. Professor Blanche Flower of Dartmouth College in England and Dr Andrew Oswald of Warwick University pointed out that extra money can really buy a little happiness. They set the very happy to 3.0, the relatively happy to 2.0, and the unhappy to 1.0. For every increase of $65,438 +0, you can only get 0.00000409 more happiness units.

According to this index, compared with widowhood or divorce, the value of lasting marriage is more than $654.38 million per year. "Breaking up" is the most harmful to happiness, followed by the death of a spouse. On average, the second marriage or subsequent marriage is not as happy as the first marriage. Teenagers whose parents are divorced 16 years old will feel unhappy when they grow up.