In the latest post on the ODID blog, Debating Development, Frances Stewart writes on whether happiness should be used as an alternative to income as a measure of progress.

Frances writes that there are serious problems with using happiness as the exclusive indicator of progress. These include measurement problems and the fact that people adapt to their situations, so that subjective assessments of wellbeing can rank high despite serious deprivations.

She suggests that internationally agreed human rights would seem to provide an acceptable basis for choice of dimensions for global comparisons across countries, but that it would be preferable for dimensions at the country or community level to be selected by participatory processes at these levels.

Read the full post.