CONCLUTION

Whilst the HPI can provide an overall sense of direction, further indicators are of course needed to shape policy and flesh out the details of societies that can achieve good lives without costing the Earth. With that in mind, researchers are starting to build a coalition of organisations to develop a framework for measuring societal progress (figure 6).

This framework should start by distinguishing between three different spheres: our goals (in terms of well-being for all), our scarcest resources (limited ecological resources), and the processes and systems which should be designed to achieve maximal well-being outputs with minimal resource inputs. Within the latter sphere, researchers have separated out the economic systems as these are the ones that have been the biggest focus of policy to date and are the ones that likely require the biggest change to enable sustainable well-being for all. It is upon the human systems that governments have the most immediate influence, but it is well-being and sustainability that they must ultimately seek to enhance.

For policy-making, in-depth measurement is needed within each of the spheres in the figure. But researchers also suggest the identification of five key headline indicators which provide an overall picture of how they are doing. The numbers within the diagram relate to these headline indicators:

v measure of environmental pressure per capita (for the resources sphere);

v measure of the percentage of the population flourishing (for the goals sphere);

v measure of economic performance – how well the economy is doing in terms of delivering sustainability and well-being for all (for the economic half of the human systems sphere);

v measure or set of measures of the other (non-economic) policy-amenable drivers of wellbeing for all (for the remaining human systems);

v measure of well-being per unit of environmental pressure (the HPI, or an HPI-like measure; connecting the resources and goals spheres).

Researchers propose that this framework is linked together, so that the headline indicators connect to the more detailed ones, providing a more joined-up approach to policy-making which puts the overall goals of society at the heart of political decisions.

THE LIST OF THE USED LITERATURE

1. Edmund Konway – 50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know

2. Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being

3. Mark Anielski – The Economics of Happiness

4. NEF (the new economics foundation) –The happy planet index: 2012 Report / A global index of sustainable well-being

5. Newspaper “The Sunday Times” – article “Happiness is the new economics”

6. S. Frey and Alois Stutzer – The Economics of Happiness Bruno

7. The economic journal Happiness & Economics; How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being (Robert Macculloch)

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1267