Happiness and Public Policy

This is the new post, “Happiness and Public Policy,” at the blog dedicated to the upcoming book, To A New Future.

Happiness and Public Policy

Public policies and practices will continue to shape the investment of public dollars and regulatory practices in the critical areas of education, health care, employment, development, intellectual property, finance, economics, security, social landscapes, and the environment.

Happiness defined as the practice of how we focus in our life and world radically changes the conversation on policies.

Happiness isn’t something we have, it is something we do. Happiness is the result of personal authorship, not ownership and as such cannot be outsourced. People at the higher income levels do not have happiness levels proportionate to net worth or income levels. Demographic differences account for less than 20% of the differences in happiness among people worldwide.

Happiness is the most compelling indicator of our personal and collective well-being and thrivancy. Research now points to the fact that when we are happy, we are more productive, generous, passionate, realistic, creative, courageous, healthy, and resilient.

This profoundly shifts the conversation around the question of whether public policies can influence or facilitate happiness in communities, regions, networks, and nations.

The research suggests that higher levels of happiness become possible under several conditions that have policy and practice implications.

In a happiness-friendly landscape of public policy and practice, we would make it easier for students to pursue learning directly related to their emerging and growing life and work passions rather than shape the education process to dedicate twelve and more years denying them.

We would favor lower income disparities and graduated rather than flat taxes. People would have greater access to healthy food and activity venues. Libraries would be positioned as centers for civic engagement create greater literacy and participation.

We would make it easier for students to start new businesses before they graduate. Corporations would be incentivized to cross-train workers in declining industries for career pathway agility. Unused medical insurance annually would be re-invested in each individual’s choice of healthy foods and activities.

Cities and neighborhoods would subsidize spaces and programs that facilitate the sharing of books, tools, talents, cooking and work spaces among people in the community. Non-local retail businesses would become “commercial network” members of the community and pay into funds that would support the launch and growth of locally owned businesses.

We would make it easier for people 8 and 80 to get around their community easily and safely. We would invest in anything that gives people more to discover and enjoy. Communities would become more walkable and bikeable, interesting and engaging. They would become spaces that facilitate new connections on all levels.

There would be far more public celebrations than public hearings and civic engagement would be measured on how much people can learn and share.

Non-profits would be awarded money to both deliver value and start up similar and complementary organizations to rhizomically scale and spread value across communities.

Every neighborhood would have invested common spaces where people could, at any time of day every day of the year, cook, jam, create, and volunteer together.

We would institute success indicators that reflected a bias for quality of life and work over the constraints of conventional economic indicators. This is a bias for narrative and stories over numbers and statistics.

These are just a handful of options to explore with the understanding that happiness as a prime metric would be an entirely new learning curve for many public policy makers and practice leaders.

What these examples have in common is that they design happiness into the core of the public landscape. They make it more possible for people to engage in the five prime practices of happiness: appreciation, generosity, interest, lightness, and easy.

19 January 2012
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Happiness and Public Policy

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