Happiness And Happiness: The Paradox Of Happiness

IT is increasingly being acknowledged that for true well being and for a fulfilling life, social and economic development should lead to or should be accompanied with happiness or subjective well being. Development theories encompass growth, rise in GDP, socio-economic equity, human development but often ignore deeper issues of subjective fulfilment and happiness. Economists, no doubt, know that wealth alone does not bring happiness yet they have confined themselves to a narrower concept of wealth basically because it can be measured and accounted. Well being including subjective well being is a broader concept. Both Aristotle in the western tradition ages ago and Dalai Lama today in the East, agree that happiness is an end in itself and man

It entered into the arena as a debate on the “Paradox of Happiness” which began explicitly with the paper published by the Psychologists Brickman and Campbell, 1971, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society”. According to their view, improvement in material wellbeing (income/wealth) has no effect on personal well being. Richard Easterlin was the first modern economist to reintroduce the concept of happiness in economics in the early 1970s. In 1974, in his paper “Does Economic Growth Improve Economic Lot? Some Economic Evidence”, he presented the ‘Easterlin Paradox’ that within a country, people of higher income are more likely to report being happy, however in international comparisons, the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person, at least with countries with income sufficient to meet the basic needs. Using two types of data – Gallop Poll type of survey and data from research conducted by human psychologist Hadley Cantrell in 1965 in 14 countries, Easterlin arrived at a result that “ In every single survey, those in the highest group were happiest on the average than those in the lowest group” In cross sectional differences among countries on the other hand, positive association between wealth and happiness, although present, is neither general, nor robust and poor countries do not appear to be less happy than richer countries. Further between 1946 -1970 average reported happiness showed no long term trend and declined in 1960-1970 i.e. no link between economic development and average level of happiness was established according to his