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How does one obtain a realistic and reliable measure of the 'happiness index' for any particular country? I imagine this is something that's subject to massive
by photochemsyn 4y ago
How does one obtain a realistic and reliable measure of the 'happiness index' for any particular country? I imagine this is something that's subject to massive propaganda efforts (for example, East Germany attempted to keep its suicide rate hidden from view, at least according to the movie 'The Lives of Others').
- PeterisP 4y agoIt's tricky - also because it's very hard to aggregate 'happiness'; for economy you can reasonably get the total and just calculate an average, but any 'happiness' measure inherently has to be bottom-up and then the differences between subpopulations in a single country become critical. Like, someone can compare their well-being at San Francisco versus Paris and see which one is better but that would be a comparison of well-being for them which won't necessarily hold for Parisians and SanFranciscans of a different income level or with different cultural values - while wealth can be compared directly in a mostly objective manner (e.g. adjusting for purchasing parity).