A “Better Life Index” that Ignores What Makes for a Better Life
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization made up mostly of industrialized countries “to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.” It emphasizes its commitment to a market economy, democratic rule, economic growth, and environmental well-being. In 2011, it launched its “Better Life Index” project that pulls together comparative data from forty different countries that purports to give a picture of what makes for a better life and how the countries studied measure up.
There are eleven “dimensions” of well-being: housing, income, jobs (employment possibilities, earnings, and job security), “community” (which seems to mean mostly the nature of the governmental social support network), education, environment (i.e., environmental quality), governance (How democratic is a country?), health, life satisfaction, safety (concerning mostly the level of crime), and “work-life balance.” The Index seems similar to the “World Happiness Report,” put out by the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Both efforts supposedly aim at substituting a broader and more qualitative notion of countries’ well-being than the aggregation of mere economic statistics when measuring their gross domestic products. Development is supposed to be something more than economics.
That sounds good. Contrary to positivistic economics (homo economicus), man is more than an economic creature and wealth is not the sum and substance of man. The problem is that both the OECD and the UN Sustainable Development people themselves provide a truncated picture of man that is only a bit more complete thanhomo economicus. It is certainly true that employment (John Paul II’s encyclicalLaborem Exercens [#18] called unemployment “in all cases an evil”), an adequate income, decent housing, good physical health, a safe neighborhood, knowing that one can breath clean air and drink uncontaminated water, and avoidance of overwork (it has been said that the most widespread addiction in the U.S. is to excessive work) are all vital to peace of mind. So, yes, these conditions are conducive to happiness.
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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com
There are eleven “dimensions” of well-being: housing, income, jobs (employment possibilities, earnings, and job security), “community” (which seems to mean mostly the nature of the governmental social support network), education, environment (i.e., environmental quality), governance (How democratic is a country?), health, life satisfaction, safety (concerning mostly the level of crime), and “work-life balance.” The Index seems similar to the “World Happiness Report,” put out by the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Both efforts supposedly aim at substituting a broader and more qualitative notion of countries’ well-being than the aggregation of mere economic statistics when measuring their gross domestic products. Development is supposed to be something more than economics.
That sounds good. Contrary to positivistic economics (homo economicus), man is more than an economic creature and wealth is not the sum and substance of man. The problem is that both the OECD and the UN Sustainable Development people themselves provide a truncated picture of man that is only a bit more complete thanhomo economicus. It is certainly true that employment (John Paul II’s encyclicalLaborem Exercens [#18] called unemployment “in all cases an evil”), an adequate income, decent housing, good physical health, a safe neighborhood, knowing that one can breath clean air and drink uncontaminated water, and avoidance of overwork (it has been said that the most widespread addiction in the U.S. is to excessive work) are all vital to peace of mind. So, yes, these conditions are conducive to happiness.
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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com
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