-Another part of my term paper
My presentation is Thursday. Wish me luck!
The term standard of living is not to be mistaken for quality of life, which also includes ones health, environmental quality, and social well-being, though they are often used interchangeably. There has been quite a debate over which indicators are better to use to show how happy people are. The Easterlin Paradox is where this particular discussion begins. In 1974 Richard Easterlin published a paper “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence.” He found that, within a country, citizens happiness increased as their incomes got higher. But when comparing countries, happiness increased only until their subsistence was taken care of, and did not increase substantially beyond that, no matter what the incomes. The intensive fury we are in, to make more and more, is called the “hedonic treadmill”. In layman's terms, keeping up with the Jones’ gone wild.
The western business world, which uses the GDP to indicate well-being, did not like this finding. Our economy is built for growth. The more it grows the more healthy it is said to be - new houses, new products, citizens are labeled consumers. The Easterlin Paradox indicates that this growth is not necessary for our well-being, and it indicates that people would be just as happy with a steady state economy.
The Easterlin Paradox ‘opened up a can of worms’ and perhaps even began a new science - of measuring happiness. Since 1974, scientists have performed similar surveys arriving at similar results. Which indicators to use and techniques of measuring happiness have been argued between social scientists and economists. The point that we can live just as happily with far less, also began to interest the environmentalist. This topic of measuring happiness via GDP versus other indicators, has produced a number of reports worthy of discussion...
Don’t you want to read the whole paper?
Enjoy! Marnie
