In pursuit of happiness

“There is now a rising worldwide demand that policy be more closely aligned with what really matters to people, as they themselves characterise their well-being”, said Professor Jeffrey D Sachs on the eve of the release of the second World Happiness Report.

The idea that happiness should be the overriding goal of public policies has gone global. It is no more exclusive to Bhutan where the government adopted the objective of maximising its gross national happiness some decades ago. France, Germany, Korea and UK are now seriously working on the idea with a view to gear public policies towards the greater happiness of the people.

The recently released World Happiness Report ranks 156 countries of the globe on the happiness index. The report offers us something to celebrate at least at the regional level. Pakistanis are the happiest people in the South Asian region other than the Bhutanese (though the report has not ranked Bhutan). Pakistan stands at 81 against India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal which respectively stand at 111,137,108 and 135 on the ranking.

One thing is abundantly clear from the rankings on the happiness index – the happiness ranking of a nation does not necessarily correspond to its per capita GDP (traditional measure of well-being) though most of the happier nations of the world reside in the developed world. The authors of the World Happiness report are fully cognizant of the shortcomings of GDP as measure of development. It is in this context that the report ranks the nations on the basis of a composite index of six key variables ie GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, someone to count on (social support), personal freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity.

Income is the first building block of happiness. Most of the countries scoring higher on the ladder of happiness are high-income countries. Certainly economic prosperity matters a lot for happiness. If economic conditions deteriorate, happiness level goes down. For example countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain struck by economic upheavals and the eurozone crisis have scored less on the happiness rankings this year compared to their previous rankings on the same index. The economic aspect is relevant to the concept of happiness from three angles.

First, a nation needs to rise above the basic economic threshold to meet the basic needs of the people. If the majority of the people are living below the poverty line, a nation cannot be happy. So economic growth on a sustainable basis, as happened in the case of the Asian tigers, is a must to feed the rising population and improve their material well-being. Second, you have to have minimum economic inequities among the people as wide inequalities become a big source of unhappiness for the majority. This point is evident from the fact that the happiest people of the world reside in societies characterised with low inequality like the Scandinavian countries. The USA, the world superpower, lags behind these countries.

One of the possible culprits is the huge inequality prevalent in the US where the share of income of the top one percent has increased substantially during the last few decades. The third angle relates to the economic arrangements in the society for low-income people, especially during times of economic distress ie a system of economic support in the form of social safety-nets etc.

A healthy life is the second building block of happiness. Both physical health and mental health matter. The report, however, lays more emphasis on mental health. Mental illness is a major cause of misery in the world, it says. The economic costs of mental illness are horrendous. It is estimated that mental illness affects about 10 percent of the population of the world. “If we want a happier world, we need a completely new deal on mental health”, the report emphasises.

In Pakistan, mental health has remained an ignored area. Not only is medical care for the mentally challenged lacking, there is a severe social stigma attached to mental illness. “Those who suffer from mental illness are doubly unfortunate. They have the condition in the first place, but in addition they are frequently discriminated against and written off as hopeless cases”, the report says.

The third ingredient of a happier life is social support. Everybody needs to fall back on some system in times of economic and mental distress. Social support here does not mean only social support programmes but more than that in the context of happiness. Family, friends and social connections matter for happiness. Social connectedness augments happiness. “Man never did live by bread alone, and we have learned – painfully – that too focused a pursuit of bread leads not only to obesity but also to a starvation of other human needs, including social connections, psychological balance and virtue”, the report rightly says.

Freedom from corruption has been identified as another important ingredient of a happy life. How does corruption reduce your happiness levels? Corruption simply implies that you are being cheated. A feeling of cheating and deprivation certainly undermines happiness. This ingredient is also connected to another element of a happier life – the freedom to make choices. A corruption-ridden society misallocates resources, distorts incentives and reduces choices.

Perhaps deep-rooted corruption and lack of meritocracy are the biggest sources of unhappiness in our case. The policy implication is simple: control of corruption should become top priority with the state not only to improve governance rather for establishing a happier society.

Generosity forms the sixth block of happiness. Perhaps this is the only element that can explain Pakistan’s reasonable score on the happiness index. Traditional economic thought is based on the assumption that human beings are selfish and guided by personal motives. According to this line of thinking, altruism is an aberration. Such assumptions are now seriously under attack in the light of research in the fields of experimental economics, psychology and neuroscience.

For example, Elizabeth Svoboda in the article ‘Hard-wired for giving’ published in the Wall Street Journal (August 31) while quoting various research studies about human brain concludes that giving is a rewarding experience. Experiments on the human brain show that giving and generosity are great sources of happiness and that the human brain is wired for giving, implying that human beings may not be selfish by nature rather their self-interested behaviour may be an outcome of environmental factors.

Thus happiness is a goal worth pursuing and the pursuit of happiness should become a policy goal for the state, which in turn means a paradigm shift in our thinking towards development and well-being. Happiness is to be cultivated both at the public policy as well as the individual level. At the policy level, more focus is required on mental health, education, inclusive economic growth, and developing harmonious communities with a sense of empowerment. At the individual level, generosity, giving, kindness and bonding with the family and friends (social connectedness) are important.

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded –sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet”. These prophetic words were said by Professor George Saunders in his convocation speech at Syracuse University for the class of 2013. For a happier life empathy, compassion and kindness at the individual level are essential virtues.

The writer is a graduate of Columbia University.Email: jamilnasir1969@gmail.com