| Derek Bok, Princeton University Press, 2010, 272 pages, £16.95. |
| The book opens with the standard eulogy found in the happiness
policy literature about the Kingdom of Bhutan, the only country in the
world to adopt Gross National Happiness rather than GNP as its principal
policy target. To be fair, Bok then points out that Bhutan is far from
an idyllic state. Unemployment is high, and theft is rising. Further,
the happiness of the majority is increased by active discrimination
against the Nepalese minority, many of whom have been forced into
refugee camps. Despite this, Bok concludes: ‘All in all, however, the
record of Bhutan remains impressive.’ Well, that’s a bit like saying the
SS had nice uniforms and made the trains run on time, just a pity about
the camps! |
| This opening vignette is typical of the frustrating tone of the book
as a whole. Overall, Bok provides a very balanced and detailed view of
the empirical evidence, and discusses in clear and interesting ways some
of the wider philosophical problems raised by the concept of happiness
policy. But regardless of the many qualifications he makes to the claims
of happiness policy proponents, he still remains firmly of the view that
happiness policy is a Good Thing. |
| So we are told, for example, that ”people are surprisingly bad
judges of what makes them happy.“ Thus happiness researchers are
apparently more knowledgeable than the individuals themselves. Again,
there is very strong evidence that politicians in Western countries are
concerned not just with the material well-being of their constituents,
but with much wider aspects of their lives. However, it turns out that
the democratic process is just not good enough. Happiness researchers
know much better than elected politicians what is best for their voters.
This elevation of the ‘expert’ armed with a clipboard and some
regression analysis is one of the most disturbing aspects of the
happiness policy approach. |
| Many of the policies advocated by Bok seem rather sensible, such as
the promotion of marriage and giving people a better education. But for
Bok it does not seem valid for a politician merely to advocate these,
genuflection to the ‘expert’ must be carried out before they can be
sanctified. |
| Bok raises the old canard of the lack of correlation between
happiness and GNP in the West. It is a mystery as to why this persists
in the literature. The time-series data on happiness is bounded by the
way it is constructed. GDP is not. The order of integration of the
latter is one, of the former it is zero. All time series econometricians
understand the implications of this point. Not surprisingly, Angus
Deaton has had much more success in correlating percentage changes in
GDP with happiness, followed by Stevenson and Wolfers, a point which Bok
does note. |
| In terms of the balanced way in which the evidence and the wider
arguments are considered, this is a much better book than a great deal
of the rest of the happiness policy advocacy literature and is worth
reading for this reason. It is marred by the repeated opinion that
ordinary people simply just do not know what is best for them. |
Paul Ormerod
Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the University of Durham Paul is
also the author of Why Most Things Fail |
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