Happiness and economics

Main article: Happiness economics

There is a recent trend in economics which relates happiness to economic performance and vice-versa.^[1] Some studies suggest that happiness is already an economic indicator or at least can be approximately measured.^[2], ^[3] New economic concepts could now be measured such as the Gross national happiness and the Happy Planet Index. Happy Life Years, a concept brought by Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven is one of the concepts set to measure well-being combining subjective data (subjective life satisfaction, measured on a scale of 0 to 10) with objective data (life expectancy). New Economics Foundation, a British think-tank used this concept to measure the "Happy Planet Index".

On the other hand, a few researchers argue that a bigger economy doesn't always buy happiness. It is argued that happiness could be used as an economic indicator not as a replacement for more traditional measures but as a supplement.^[4]