Ecological Footprint

As it has been seen earlier, there is no common consensus on the factors that determine the experience of happiness at personal and national levels. While it remains a subjective phenomena, several tools that have been evolved over the past few years that have enabled social scientists and psychologists to ‘measure’ happiness. The possibility thus, of an empirical basis for research on happiness has resulted in widespread interest on this subject which has been not only been recognized as playing a key role in driving economies but also serving as a benchmark to gauge the success of implementing related policies. However, it is interesting to note the different criterion adopted by different studies to assess the extent of happiness experienced

Others justify it by stating that the ecological footprint, championed by the WWF, is widely used by both local and national governments, as well as supranational organisations such as the European Commission. In fact, the HPI and its components have been considered in several political circles and cited in 2007 in the British Conservative Party as a possible substitute for GDP .

In a 2007 review of progress indicators produced by the European Parliament there is a list of the following pros and cons to using the HPI as a measure of national progress:

Pros:

• Considers the actual ‘ends’ of economic activity in the form of life satisfaction and longevity

• Combines well being and environmental aspects

• Simple and easily understandable scheme for calculating the index

• Comparability of results (‘EF’ and ‘life expectancy’ can be applied to different countries)

• Data online available, although some data gaps

Ranking of Happiness: 2010-2012

Table. 3

Talking about the choice of the variables included in this report, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, an American Economist and Director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University as well as one of the principal editors of the World Happiness Reports since 2012, says, "The aspiration of society is the flourishing of its members. This report gives evidence on how to achieve societal well-being. It's not by money alone, but also by fairness, honesty, trust and good health. The evidence here will be useful to all countries as they pursue the new sustainable development goals."

Unlike several other reports, this one does not use an index to evaluate the happiness levels of people but gives ‘a primary role for people’s own evaluations of their lives’ because it believes that:

1) the existing indexes on well-being have their own specific history and rationale with certain perceived limitations

2) life evaluations provide primary new knowledge about the value people attribute to their lives allowing researchers to use that data to understand factors that facilitate better lives.

3) The population based samples in each country help to calculate and present statistically relevant data in a meaningful