Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
Insight and inspiration on making the right choices for people and planet. We feature bold conversations with global leaders and innovators from government, businesses, community advocacy, foundations, and more who are charting a path for inclusive growth and sustainability. Hosted by Michael Green, CEO at Social Progress Imperative, we explore how the world must move beyond GDP metrics and economic growth to truly improve the social and environmental wellbeing of communities. ©Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast is an essential listening for decision-makers ready to do things differently.
Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
What Is The Secret of Happiness?
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While the connection between GDP per capita and life satisfaction is undeniable, it isn't the whole story. We explore the World Happiness Report by looking at countries that punch above their weight and those that underperform given their wealth. GDP only buys happiness up to a point, so with the Global Social Progress Index, we analyze the role of Personal Freedom and Opportunity in long-term life satisfaction.
Michael Green, CEO at Social Progress Imperative, analyzes the top countries in the World Happiness Report, including Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Costa Rica, and Mexico. He also compares the results with some underperforming countries such as the United States, Singapore and Greece.
The Empirics of Social Progress: The Interplay between Subjective Well-Being and Societal Performance:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20181036
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Happiness. Everyone wants it and we're not sure how to get it. So what is the secret of happiness? Well a good place to start and look for answers is the World Happiness Report, which ranks a hundred and forty plus countries based on their citizens' responses to questions about their life satisfaction. This always makes interesting reading, although to be fair, it's rather predictably Finland that always seems to come out on top. So this then begs the question: if Finland's on top, what makes them so happy? Well, Q journalists writing lots of articles about the joy of saunas. Indeed, when Denmark used to be the champion on world happiness, journalists used to like write lots of articles about Hooger and Borgen and eating bacon sandwiches. So that's not particularly helpful. But if we look at these results, what do we find about the secret of happiness? Well, the first thing we see is that money clearly helps a lot. Almost all the top performers on life satisfaction are also top performers on GDP per capita. But only up to a point. There are countries like Costa Rica, which ranks number four in the World Happiness Report, and Mexico, which ranks number 12, which are two countries that both enjoy a high level of happiness far in excess of their economic means. And the same is true the other way around. There are countries like the United States, which ranks 23rd, Singapore, which ranks 36th, Japan 61st, Greece 85th. All of them are more miserable than their bank accounts should suggest they should be. Some of the differences between wealth and happiness can be explained by social progress. All the northern European countries that dominate the happiness rankings are rich but also have high levels of social progress. The US, on the other hand, doesn't convert its wealth into social progress very well and is relatively unhappy. Whereas Costa Rica isn't so rich but is very good at producing social progress and is very happy indeed. The case of Singapore can actually help us narrow it down even further, because Singapore has very high GDP, it also has very high social progress, but is relatively weak in its performance on opportunity within the Social Progress Index, which is also an area where Costa Rica does particularly well. So there seems to be evidence that opportunity is linked to life satisfaction happiness. And indeed there's empirical evidence to support this as well. A few years ago, Professors Michael Porter and Scott Stern, who are advisors to SBI and another researcher, Daniel Fader, analysed the relationship between GDP, life satisfaction, and social progress. And they found that the things that make up the opportunity dimension of the Social Progress Index do seem to have an independent, positive impact on life satisfaction. It seems that we need rights and freedoms to be truly happy. There's a link to the paper down below. That doesn't, however, explain why rich countries with good social progress and good scores on opportunity, like Japan and Greece, are still so relatively miserable. More research required, I feel. But in the meantime, just take a bacon sandwich, go and sit in the sauna, and I'm sure you'll feel a lot better. There'll be more of these. And if you've got ideas about themes or issues you'd like to explore using Social Progress Index, do let us know. Thanks again, bye bye.