The National Happiness Index (GNH) was first put forward by the King of Bhutan in South Asia. He believes that "policies should focus on happiness and aim at achieving happiness" and that "the basic problem in life is how to keep a balance between material life (including the benefits of science and technology) and spiritual life". Under the guidance of this ruling idea, Bhutan creatively put forward the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, which consists of four levels: good government governance, economic growth, cultural development and environmental protection.
If "gross production value" embodies material orientation and production orientation, "gross happiness value" embodies people-oriented. Mieko Nishui, Vice President of the World Bank for South Asian Affairs, spoke highly of Bhutan's initiative. She said that policies that are completely affected by economic growth often make people fall into the trap of material desires and are difficult to extricate themselves. Almost all countries have the same problem, but we must not be pessimistic. Because "only one country in the world regards material and spiritual wealth as the source of national economic development policy and has achieved success, and that is the Kingdom of Bhutan. The' gross national happiness' eulogized by the state is far more important than the gross national product. Forty years ago, Bhutan was still in a barter economy without currency. However, it has maintained a high economic growth rate, and now it has surpassed other countries such as India. It is the country with the highest average income of China people in South Asia. In the ranking of the World Bank, it has also greatly surpassed other developing countries to become the first. Nevertheless, people who have been to Bhutan will say with one voice that it seems that they have returned to their spiritual hometown. Bhutan has shown us many unfathomable things. "
When it comes to tourism, Bhutan is not "the more people come, the better", but has adopted a limited-scale tourism development model, which has never been promoted on a large scale internationally. Bhutan restricts the total number of inbound tourists and implements the practice of "all-inclusive price with high quality and good price". The government has formulated a guidebook for tour operators and a code of conduct for tourists. Although Bhutan's annual tourism income is only $3 million, it is enough to maintain the stable development of tourism and has little impact on society and nature.
There have been many attempts similar to GNH in the international community, such as "green GDP", the United Nations human development index, and the United Kingdom's "domestic development index" (MDP). After deducting the cost of offsetting social and environmental costs, considering the long-term environmental damage and natural capital depreciation, a series of economic adjustments have been affirmed to ensure a prudent balance between investment and trade, reflecting that the increase in income of 1 pound is more meaningful to the poor than to the rich. The emergence of these indicators reflects the limitations of a single GDP indicator and also shows the new needs of mankind.
"Now many local governments have put forward new evaluation indicators such as happiness index and mass satisfaction. Generally speaking, although it is a bit simple, it is better to do it than not to do it. " At the beginning of last year, Cheng, an academician of China Academy of Sciences, put forward a proposal to implement "people-oriented" and calculate "national happiness index", and suggested that the state organize relevant departments to study and formulate an evaluation system of "national happiness index".
In 2004, China's per capita GDP was already $65,438+0,270. Since 1980, China's GDP has increased by 9.3% annually, creating a new economic miracle in East Asia. Economic achievements have attracted worldwide attention, but the overall human development situation shows a negative trend that is inconsistent with the growth of GDP. In 2003, the economic losses caused by environmental pollution and ecological destruction accounted for 15% of GDP in that year, and the Gini coefficient reflecting the fairness of income distribution exceeded the critical point of social imbalance of 0.4.
According to Professor RuutVeenhoven of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, 1990 China's national happiness index was 6.64( 1- 10/-kloc-0/0 scale), 1995 rose to 7.08, and in 2006 it dropped to 6.60 from 5438+0. The data shows that even sustained and rapid economic growth cannot guarantee the continuous increase of national happiness.
What affects people's happiness?
From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, the measurement of people's subjective well-being became a hot research field in psychology. Psychologists' discussion on subjective well-being comes from three disciplines: quality of life, mental health and social gerontology. With sociologists and economists joining the ranks of happiness research, the rich connotation and manifestations of happiness are more revealed.
It should be said that happiness, as a part of social psychological system, is influenced by many complicated factors, including economic factors such as employment status and income level; Social factors such as education level and marital quality; Demographic factors such as gender and age; Cultural factors such as values and traditional habits; National character, self-esteem, attitude towards life, personality characteristics, achievement motivation and other psychological factors. Political factors such as democratic rights and participation opportunities.
In addition, the understanding of subjective well-being involves many analytical levels, including cognition and emotion, individuals and groups, horizontal and vertical, time and time, and so on. In the close relationship between subjective well-being and many factors and levels of social psychological system, the following points are very unique and important:
First, the psychological frame of reference. On the social level, the happiness of its members will be greatly influenced by its psychological frame of reference. For example, in a closed society, due to the lack of comparison with other societies, although the material development level of this society is not high, due to psychological conservatism and habitual stereotypes, its members may be satisfied and show high happiness; And a society at the beginning of opening up, in the face of various shocks from developed foreign societies, began to refer to the outside world. Therefore, the happiness of its members may show a downward trend, because at this time their original self-esteem has been traumatized.
Second, the degree of achievement motivation. People's achievement needs determine the achievement motivation, which in turn determines the expected ambition. Among them, people's cognition of their achievements is an important part, because if people realize that their achievements are higher than their expected ambitions, then they will have a strong sense of happiness; On the other hand, if people realize that their level of achievement is lower than their expected ambition, then there will be no happiness.
Third, the sense of ontological security. It refers to the individual's confidence in the continuity of self-identity and its social environment. This sense of reliability from people and things is extremely important for the formation of individual trust, and trust in the outside world is not only the basis of individual security, but also the basis for individuals to resist anxiety and produce subjective happiness. Therefore, there is no simple positive correlation between people's happiness and their own economic situation or income level. In real life, some people with poor economic conditions are very happy, while some millionaires are worried all day.
Therefore, we can understand why in the past 10 years, China people's happiness first rose and then fell, showing a lack of synchronization with the economic development track. The main reason is that in the early stage of reform, opening up and modernization, the effect of material development is obvious. At that time, the degree of social differentiation was not great, and social members were more likely to make psychological longitudinal comparisons, which made them more likely to feel satisfied than their living standards in the past. In recent 10 years, the transformation of social structure has accelerated, the system reform in various fields has increasingly touched on deep interests, and the degree of social differentiation has increased, especially the gap between the rich and the poor has become prominent; In terms of social psychology, with the gradual improvement of living conditions, people's demand level is increasing day by day, and it shows a diversified trend. Therefore, the standard that can meet the demand is relatively improved; However, due to the relative shortage of resources, the intensification of competition and the acceleration of the pace of modern life, people's sense of pressure has greatly increased, which has strongly affected people's happiness.
What deserves special attention is that some survey results show that in recent years, people's attention to social issues tends to be related to people's livelihood, and people's livelihood issues have become the most concerned social issues for most members of society. This shift of focus reflects people's judgment on the social development trend. The increasing concern for people's livelihood especially reflects that the system reform and social development have the strongest impact on people's living conditions and quality of life. All these have had a profound impact on people's sense of security, that is, the demand for social life security has increased, thus affecting people's happiness.
Some misunderstandings about "happiness index"
In recent years, "happiness index" has become a hot topic in China's academic circles, and it has also become a practical topic for some government departments.
Happiness index refers to the quantitative results of people's subjective well-being with subjective well-being as an index and using special measurement tools. However, if the happiness index will play an important and reasonable role in the quality of life index system and even in the development planning of a place or a country, then it is undoubtedly the most basic premise to seek a full understanding of the happiness index and avoid various misunderstandings.
First of all, the understanding of happiness involves philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, culturology and other disciplines, which shows the high complexity of the social psychological system, and this complex subjective world needs to be measured and explained by quantitative tools, which undoubtedly poses a major challenge to the limitations of modern social science. Therefore, a possible misunderstanding of happiness index is the tendency to simplify happiness index. One of the typical manifestations is that we hope to achieve a comprehensive and accurate grasp of subjective well-being through a questionnaire. An important question in the measurement of happiness is whether the life feelings expressed by people in the measurement can represent their overall life feelings in a period.
Secondly, happiness index is the "wind vane" and "barometer" of social development and its problems. If the social psychological system includes cognitive evaluation at the rational level and emotional feelings at the perceptual level, then emotional feelings often occupy a dominant position in happiness, and happiness is sometimes a very personalized subjective field. Therefore, in the field of practice, happiness index can be an important aspect in the quality of life index system, but it is not the only aspect. Here, a possible misunderstanding about happiness index is that happiness index can be regarded as an absolute index reflecting the quality of personal life and measuring the degree of social progress, thus ignoring the consideration of the connotation of social development and the richness of human spiritual field.
Thirdly, as an important reference factor in formulating development plans and social policies, the relationship between happiness index and GDP should be dialectical. GDP is a hard indicator and happiness index is a soft indicator, both of which have their unique status and role in development planning and social policy. Being able to care about happiness shows that the theory and practice of development have risen to a higher level and the connotation of development is richer. But we must never choose between GDP and happiness index. Therefore, another possible misunderstanding of happiness index lies in "the worship of happiness index", that is, the meaning of happiness index is unconditionally exaggerated, one-sided and extreme.
For decades, western psychologists, sociologists and economists have been exploring happiness measurement methods and accumulated certain knowledge and experience. Even so, no happiness measurement tool has been generally recognized, and many scales are still being improved. There are differences between China and the West in social and cultural background and social psychology, which is one of the forms of reflection, so the understanding of happiness will not be exactly the same, and the way of feeling happiness will be different. Therefore, in order to develop a set of happiness measurement tools that reflect the international level and conform to China's national conditions, especially to obtain a happiness index that can be used as a reference for development planning and social policy, high-level and innovative multidisciplinary cooperative research is needed.