Nor should it try, because it's an objective measure, whereas HPI is completely subjective measure. Apples and oranges.
I'm also not convinced self-reported happiness is accurate across cultures. How do you control for cultural variations in the question "are you happy?" Diverse cultures have deep differences of understanding when approaching that question.
What's subjective to you is pretty objective to me - the health impact of unhappiness, for example, will reflect in healthcare costs. Which btw makes up 15% of US GDP. Now is that even real GDP or just a manufactured problem - with doctors and lawers and insurance guys all making money off of health problems of consumers.
jquery|14 years ago
I'm also not convinced self-reported happiness is accurate across cultures. How do you control for cultural variations in the question "are you happy?" Diverse cultures have deep differences of understanding when approaching that question.
chakde|14 years ago
What's subjective to you is pretty objective to me - the health impact of unhappiness, for example, will reflect in healthcare costs. Which btw makes up 15% of US GDP. Now is that even real GDP or just a manufactured problem - with doctors and lawers and insurance guys all making money off of health problems of consumers.
See this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-...