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Today there is increasing support for the idea that governments should aim at greater happiness for a greater number of citizens. Is this a mission impossible? The following questions arise in this context: (1) Is greater happiness in a nation feasible? (2) If so, can governments do much about it? (3) If so, what can governments do to raise happiness in their country? (4) How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other political aims? In this chapter, I take stock of the available research findings on happiness that bear answers to these questions. To do this, I use a large collection of research findings gathered in the World Database of Happiness. These data show that greater happiness is possible, and indicate some ways to achieve this goal. The pursuit of public happiness fits well with several other policy aims. Keywords: happiness, life-satisfaction, research synthesis, utilitarianism, nations

The rational pursuit of happiness requires knowledge of happiness and in particular answers to the following four questions: 1: Is greater happiness realistically possible? 2: If so, to what extent is that in our own hands? 3: How can we get happier? What things should be considered in the choices we make? 4: How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other things we value? Answers to these questions are not only sought by individuals who want to improve their personal life, they are also on the mind of managers concerned about the happiness of members of their organization and of governments aiming to promote greater happiness of a greater number of citizens. All these actors might make more informed choices if they could draw on a sound base of research findings. In this paper I take stock of the available findings and the answers these hold for the four types of questions asked by the three kinds of actors. I draw on data from different scientific disciplines gathered in the World Database of Happiness, which serves as an on-line supplement to this paper. The data provide good answers to the questions 1 and 2, but fall short on the questions 3 and 4. Priorities for further research are indicated

The rational pursuit of happiness requires knowledge of happiness and in particular answers to the following four questions: 1: Is greater happiness realistically possible? 2: If so, to what extent is that in our own hands? 3: How can we get happier? What things should be considered in the choices we make? 4: How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other things we value? Answers to these questions are not only sought by individuals who want to improve their personal life, they are also on the mind of managers concerned about the happiness of members of their organization and of governments aiming to promote greater happiness of a greater number of citizens. All these actors might make more informed choices if they could draw on a sound base of evidence. In this paper I take stock of the available evidence and the answers it holds for the four types of questions asked by the three kinds of actors. To do this, I use a large collection of research findings on happiness gathered in the World Database of Happiness. The data provide good answers to the questions 1 and 2, but fall short on the questions 3 and 4. Priorities for further research are indicated.

Today there is increasing support for the idea that governments should aim at greater happiness for a greater number of citizens. Is this a mission impossible? The following questions arise in this context: (1) Is greater happiness in a nation feasible? (2) If so, can governments do much about it? (3) If so, what can governments do to raise happiness in their country? (4) How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other political aims? In this chapter, I take stock of the available research findings on happiness that bear answers to these questions. To do this, I use a large collection of research findings gathered in the World Database of Happiness. These data show that greater happiness is possible, and indicate some ways to achieve this goal. The pursuit of public happiness fits well with several other policy aims. Keywords: happiness, life-satisfaction, research synthesis, utilitarianism, nations

Intro Need for a measure of quality of life in nations How to assess how well a nation is doing? One way is to look at the quality-of-life of the people who live there. This view is gaining prominence, both among policy makers and the general public. This begs the question what quality-of-life is precisely and how that can be measured comprehensively. Assumed quality-of-life Quality-of-life in nations is commonly measured by taking stock of conditions that are believed to make for a better life, such as economic affluence, full employment and education. Measures of such conditions are added in an index, like the Human Development Index (HDI) or the Index of Social Progress (ISP). Items in such indexes are typically things that are on the political agenda and as such these indexes inform about progress on the way chosen. Yet these indexes do not tell us whether we are on the right track, that is, whether these policy achievements really improved the lives of citizens. Still another problem is that such measures typically assume that more is better and do not inform us about an optimum, e.g. how many years of education is optimal for a good life. Apparent quality of life Another approach is to assess how well people thrive in a society. The focus is then on the outcomes of life, rather than on the preconditions. How well an organism thrives is typically reflected in its lifetime. In higher animals, thriving reflects also in affective experience and humans are moreover able to estimate how well they have felt over longer periods of time. These estimates of how we feel most of the time are at the basis of the appraisal of how happy we are. Hence in the case of humans, thriving reflects both in how long

Wie kann gemessen werden, wie gut es der Bevölkerung eines Staates geht? Man kann sich zum Beispiel die Lebensqualität der Bevölkerung ansehen. Dieser Ansatz gewinnt in der Politik und der allgemeinen Öffentlichkeit zunehmend an Bedeutung. Das wiederum wirft die Fragen auf, was Lebensqualität genau ist und wie sie gemessen werden kann.

ABSTRACT The rational pursuit of happiness requires knowledge of happiness and in particular answers to the following four questions: 1: Is greater happiness realistically possible? 2: If so, to what extent is that in our own hands? 3: How can we get happier? What things should be considered in the choices we make? 4: How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other things we value? Answers to these questions are not only sought by individuals who want to improve their personal life, they are also on the mind of managers concerned about the happiness of members of their organization and of governments aiming to promote greater happiness of a greater number of citizens. All these actors might make more informed choices if they could draw on a sound base of evidence. In this paper I take stock of the available evidence and the answers it holds for the four types of questions asked by the three kinds of actors. To do this, I use a large collection of research findings on happiness gathered in the World Database of Happiness. The data provide good answers to the questions 1 and 2, but fall short on the questions 3 and 4. Priorities for further research are indicated.

Comment évaluer si un pays se porte bien ? Une solution consiste à s'intéresser à la qualité de la vie des personnes qui y vivent. Cette approche gagne en importance, tant parmi les responsables politiques qu'auprès du grand public. Elle nécessite de définir ce qu'est précisément la qualité de vie et comment on peut la mesurer en détail.

Glück ist in modernen Gesellschaften ein vorrangiges Gut; die meisten von uns streben nach einem glücklichen Leben und schreiben dem Glücksbefinden großen Wert zu (Harding 1985). Die Unterstützung für jenen moralphilosophischen Ansatz, dem zufolge wir mehr Glück für mehr Menschen anstreben sollten (Bentham 1789/1970), nimmt stetig zu. Entsprechend gewinnt das Glück auch auf der Tagesordnung der Politik weiter an Bedeutung (Bok 2010; Donovan et. al 2002; Frey/Stutzer 2002). Um dieses Streben nach Glück besser nachvollziehen zu können, müssen wir die Bedingungen des Glücklichseins besser verstehen lernen, und das erfordert systematische Untersuchungen. Das Studium des Glücks ist schon seit langem Tummelplatz für philosophische Spekulationen, die jedoch zu keiner soliden Forschungsgrundlage geführt haben. Erst in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten haben Erhebungsmethoden der Sozialwissenschaften hier einen Durchbruch gebracht. Es wurden verlässliche Messparameter für das Glück entwickelt, die inzwischen zu umfangreichen Erkenntnissen auf diesem Gebiet geführt haben. Diese Literatur zum Forschungsgegenstand >Glück< lässt sich in Hinblick auf wenige Schlüsselfragen einordnen, die jeweils als Einzelschritte bei der Schaffung von mehr Glück für eine größere Zahl betrachtet werden können: (1) Was genau ist Glück? (2) Ist Glück messbar? (3) Wie glücklich sind wir derzeit? (4) Was macht uns glücklich bzw. unglücklich? und (5) Lässt sich das Glücksbefinden dauerhaft steigern?

INTRODUCTION Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal human functioning (Sheldon et. all. 2000). Happiness is not the same as optimal functioning but is a closely related phenomenon. Happiness is a major manifestation of optimal functioning, since we are hard-wired to feel good when functioning well (e.g. Balcombe 2006). Happiness is also a determinant of optimal functioning, since happiness "broadens" our behavioral repertoire and "builds" resources (Fredrickson 2004). Consequently, happiness is a major topic in positive psychology. Much research in positive psychology aims at understanding why some people are happier than others and tries to find ways for making people happier. As such, the science of positive psychology links up with the ideology that we should foster human happiness. The idea of a moral obligation to advance human happiness is a fruit of the European "Enlightenment," an intellectual movement that took position against religious views that had dominated thinking in the Middle Ages. One of the contested views was that happiness can be found only in the afterlife and that earthly life serves as an entrance test to Heaven. Enlightened opinion was rather that happiness is possible on Earth and that we should not renounce it. Another contested view was that the basis of morality is in divine revelation, and in particular in the 10 Commandments. Enlightened thinkers came to see morality more as a matter of human agreement and discussed the intellectual foundations for social contracts. Much of this thought was voiced by Jeremy Bentham (1789) in his famous book On Morals and Legislation, in which he argued that the good and bad of actions should be judged by their effects on human happiness. In this view, the best thing to do is what results in the "greatest happiness, for the greatest number." This moral creed is called "the greatest happiness pr

Il massimo della felicita per il massimo della populazione: obiettivo possibile e desiderabile? È davvero possibile misurare la felicità umana in modo comparabile? Ed è davvero questo lo scopo dell'azione politica? Il tema ha suscitato un vasto dibattito che ha come epicentro il World Database of Happiness ('Archivio mondiale della felicità'), totalmente accessibile dal web e gestito dal sociologo Ruut Veenhoven della Erasmus University di Rotterdam. In un recente articolo (settembre 2009) per il «Journal of Happiness Studies» dal titolo Greater Happiness for a Greater Number: Is That Possible and Desirable?, Veenhoven confuta le tesi degli scettici sulla validità della felicità come obiettivo dell'azione pubblica. Per gentile concessione dell'Autore pubblichiamo il testo integrale dell'articolo.

Human societies cannot exist without human beings and human beings cannot exist without a society. Still there can be a conflict of interest between the individual and society and there are historical examples of societies prospering at the cost of its members, and examples of people thriving at the cost of society. The degree of conflict or synergy will vary over time. This begs the question: How it is today? To what extent does the well-being of contemporary nations go together with the well-being of their inhabitants? In a system theoretical perspective one can distinguish four kinds of being 'well': 1) good external conditions, 2) appropriate internal functioning, 3) positive external effects and 4) system maintenance. At the level of nations these aspects of well-being cannot be meaningfully combined in one measure, hence each aspect is measured separately. At the level of individuals a fairly comprehensive measure is how long and happily people live. Data were available for 92 nations in the early 2000s. Analysis of these data shows much correspondence between the well-being of contemporary nations and average well-being of citizens in these nations. The well-being of citizens, as measured with Happy Life Years, appears to be strongly correlated with: a) the position of the nation in the world system, b) the functioning of public institutions in the nation, c) the productivity of the nation, and d) the stability of the system. There are plausible explanations for this connection, one is that modern society fits human nature fairly well and another that happy citizens make a better society. So, there is no great conflict between the individual and society, at least not at this moment.

Happiness is rising on the political agenda and this calls for measures of how well nations perform in creating great happiness for a great number, analogous to measures of success in creating wealth, such as GDP. Happiness is defined as subjective enjoyment of one's life as-a-whole and this can be measured using self-reports. Question on happiness are currently used in large scale surveys of the general population in nations. As a result we have now comparable data on happiness in 95 contemporary nations and time-series of 25 years and longer on 11 developed nations. These data can be aggregated in different ways: If the aim is simply greater happiness for a greater number of citizens, Average happiness (AH) is an appropriate measure. If the focus is on enduring happiness, it is better to combine average happiness with longevity in an index of Happy Life Years (HLY). If the aim is to reduce disparity among citizens a relevant indicator is the Inequality of Happiness (IH) in the nations as measured with the standard deviation. Average and dispersion can also be combined in an index of Inequality-Adjusted Happiness (IAH). Comparison across nations shows sizable differences on all these measures of gross national happiness and these differences correspond with societal characteristics that can be influenced by policy makers, such as freedom and justice. Comparison over time shows major improvement during the last decade.

Darrin MacMahon notes that people are fairly happy in contemporary capitalist democracies and asks me what public policy can do to create even greater happiness for a greater number. In my view there are options at three levels: the macro level of nations, the meso level of organizations, and the micro level of individuals. I have discussed these options in more detail elsewhere.[1]