A review of Taiwan’s happiness
rankings
By Tu Jenn-hwa杜震華
Bhutan was once praised as one of the happiest
countries in the world, but due to the materialism and competition that has
followed the penetration of Western culture in recent years, people’s sense of
happiness has quickly collapsed. Mexico is at the bottom of the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) happiness index, but people’s
subjective sense of happiness is ranked at No. 10.
During the 1970s and 1980s, when Taiwan’s economy
grew rapidly, there was a strong sense of happiness. Although the older
generations long for those days, not many want to return to that era.
Happiness, then, is hard to define and yet it lies at the heart of our
pursuits.
On Aug. 30, the Directorate-General of Budget,
Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released Taiwan’s first Gross National
Happiness index. To “get on track” with the international community, the index
was compiled based on the 24 indicators in 11 categories of the Your Better
Life Index of the OECD, which is sometimes called “a club for the rich.”
The results showed that Taiwan ranks 19th, in the
middle among the OECD’s 34 member states and two partner states, and enjoys a
“moderate level” of happiness. Interestingly, the ranking is higher than
Japan’s and South Korea’s.
The OECD is an organization for developed countries
so the government is content to see it operating here. However, looking at the
depressed state of the nation’s economy, the results are strange — is it
possible that Taiwan is fourth in the world in terms of “income and wealth?”
The DGBAS has always been strict with its
statistics, so there is no reason to doubt the results. Still, a deeper reading
shows there is little cause for excitement. Several other surveys have showed
Japan and South Korea lag behind Taiwan in terms of people’s sense of
happiness, partly due to their high suicide rates.
What measures can Taiwan take in response to the
survey?
In the past, a happiness index was just a matter of
academic research. Experts discovered that people’s sense of happiness does not
necessarily increase as the economy grows — a rich lifestyle often has a
negative impact on happiness: Watching too much TV can result in deteriorating
personal relationships, living in a tiny apartment in a big city can make a
person feel insignificant, traffic jams can be frustrating, neighbors are often
strangers because people are too busy, and an excess of food is making us obese
and threatening our health.
The design of the OECD’s index is fundamentally
flawed, because it overlooks subjective happiness. Surprisingly, the level of
“subjective satisfaction” is only one of many items of the index. It thus
ignores the fact that subjective satisfaction is the result of a “chemical
reaction” between all objective conditions and psychological and environmental
factors. The government should therefore focus on the level of and changes in
the public’s subjective satisfaction.
If we look at subjective satisfaction, Taiwan’s
ranking drops to 25th and in a preparatory survey conducted in October last
year it was 34th, almost at the very bottom among OECD member states. This
means that there is room for improvement.
As Taiwan learns from other countries and tries to
understand its level of happiness, it shows that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his government are determined to improve
policy effectiveness.
The real value of the national happiness index is
how it is used to adjust government policy so that the nation’s happiness can
improve.
Tu Jenn-hwa is director of the Commerce Development
Research Institute’s business development and policy research department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
