The World Happiness Report exists to increase life satisfaction at the governmental level. As WHR notes, the report “reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy.”
In 2012, the same year as the first happiness report, the United Nations General Assembly drafted a note titled “Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development.” In it, the organization notes that GDP alone is not a precise indicator of happiness or well-being.
While there is criticism that happiness is a luxury when facing other systemic issues and concerns that richer, more developed countries may skew the results, the General Assembly explains in the note that looking at happiness is necessary:
“The pursuit of happiness is a stated objective in many national constitutions, and the creation of an enabling environment for improving people’s well-being is a development goal in itself. Overall, there is no doubt that Governments need to revisit their priorities. In the face of persistent, extreme poverty, and global warming generated by current production systems, focusing on other measures of well-being beyond rising incomes can only be worthwhile. Moreover, some scholars argue that, as we already live in the Anthropocene Age, in which humans influence the Earth’s physical systems, the quest for happiness should be strongly linked to the quest for sustainable development. Lastly, with the progress of research on happiness, the evidence of its usefulness in policy design is gradually emerging.”
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