{"id":8008,"date":"2018-03-20T01:59:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T01:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=8008"},"modified":"2018-03-20T01:59:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T01:59:01","slug":"how-measure-wellbeing-happiness-paul-anand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/society-politics\/how-measure-wellbeing-happiness-paul-anand\/","title":{"rendered":"How to measure happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finland is the happiest country in the world, according to the annual World Happiness Report<\/a>, with the UK ranked 19th this year (2018).\u00a0 But the report shows that countries with a higher GDP, such as the USA – ranked 18th; China – in 86th place; and Japan – 54th – don’t automatically have a happier population.<\/p>\n

Quality of life is about more than money<\/h2>\n

Examining how happiness is measured across the globe is the subject of a major new survey, led by\u00a0Paul Anand, Professor of Economics<\/a> at The Open University. He says that “while different countries are doing it in different ways, there’s a growing general agreement that quality of life needs to be about more than just money, wealth and traditional measures of economic growth.”<\/p>\n

Quality of life needs to be about more than just money, wealth and traditional measures of economic growth<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The cluster of Nordic countries at the top of the World Happiness Report rankings suggests shared features of policy, geography and culture that matter, says Professor Anand: “These are countries where high taxes are used to generate relatively equal societies; where social mobility and income security are much greater as a result.”<\/p>\n