Word: panelings
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...Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts who served on the panel, says a focus on growth can be helpful. It's just that we need to think of the concept differently. "Growth doesn't have to mean more stuff," she says. "Isn't that the point of the report, in a way? That growth doesn't have to mean growth...
...Included in the panel were Princeton University's Daniel Kahneman, one of the first psychologists to apply happiness studies to economics; the British economist Nicolas Stern, whose influential "Stern Report" advocated green technologies to stimulate economic growth; and Robert Putnam, the Harvard sociologist and best-selling author of Bowling Alone, which traces the decline of the U.S.'s "social capital" through the decline of 10-pin bowling leagues...
...These panel members and other psychologists and sociologists have long noted that an increase in personal wealth above a certain income (about $12,000 a year per person, in some studies) has only a small effect on life satisfaction. Far more important is a person's relative position in society - how big your house is compared with your neighbor's, as opposed to its absolute size. According to these studies, even if everyone's income rose at a uniform rate - a rising tide lifting all boats - the growth would not make anyone significantly happier, at least not in the long...
...Does this mean we should ignore growth altogether? The panel did not come up with a single statistic to replace GDP, in the way that Bhutan - a state of 600,000 people in southeast Asia - has for years used Gross National Happiness as a GDP substitute. Instead, it suggests that countries publish an annual report, much like a corporation does, that includes a range of measurements of well-being...
...Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, the doyen of happiness economics in the U.K., agrees with the panel's recommendations. He says policymakers need not worry about growth. "My view about economic growth is that it's absolutely inevitable," he tells TIME. "It's simply the result of human creativity, and it will go on forever. But that won't be a huge factor in making us happier. What could make us happier is better human relationships." (See 10 big recession surprises...