A Study of the Gap between Happiness Indices and Economic Indicators ─ OECD advanced countries as an example ─

• Main Authors: Hsin-Min Liu, 劉欣旻
• Other Authors: 張銘今
• Format: Others
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/639y2a

碩士 === 國立臺中科技大學 === 應用日語系日本市場暨商務策略碩士班 === 102 === ABSTRACT For the pursuit of higher economic development, every government needs to implement different economic policies. Under these policies, businesses and labor are unconsciously unstoppable pursuit economic indicators which were according to the data of money. Admittedly highly developed economy really brought people many advantages, but there are many disadvantages. Among them, suicide issue is much attention. Due to the high occurrence of suicide, countries around the world have begun to question the excessive pursuit of the impact of economic development, and began to explore the importance of “Subject Well-Being.” The first country to advocate for the well-being is Bhutan. In 1976, the fourth generation of the King of Bhutan published internationally "Gross National Happiness“(GNH) is important than “Gross National Production” (GNP). In fact, about “Subject Well-being”, Easterlin, R had presented “Easterlin Paradox” early in 1974. This paradox is to say economic development to a certain extent, the relationship between the national income and Subject Well-Being is not necessarily positively related. On the contrary, the possibility of a negative relationship is very high. Later in 2010, Shiraishi Ken and Shiraishi Sayuri summed up the 3 reason of "Easterlin Paradox". First, in the standpoint of economic, compared to income, the psychological factors accounted for the majority for people. Second, according to Clark et al (2008) mentioned in the papers "Relative Income Hypothesis" is concerned, people refer to the relative income, not absolute income. Third, the standard for being satisfied for people will be increased with time. This thesis compare the national rankings of well-being and economic to study the gap between well-being and economic indicators. The well-being rankings been selected in this thesis is GNH, OECD’ s ” Better Life Index” and The Legatum Institute''s “ The Prosperity Index”. And the economic rankings is “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP) and the GDP of “Purchasing Power Parity” (PPP) conversion. Conclusions are as followed. This paper will be mainly divided between happiness and economic indicators into “There are gaps in the country”and “no gap in the country” two groups. Then seperate “There are gaps in the country” into “high GDP, low degree of Subject Well-Being” for first type,”low GDP, country with high degree of Subject Well-Being” for second type. Separate “no gap in the country” into “neither GDP nor Subject Well-Being are low” for third type, “both GDP and Subject Well-Being are high” for fourth type. Type 1 and type 2 are particular tend to economic substance side or the spiritual side, it is easy to produce gaps. On the other hand, such as type 4, when people are satisfied with "work-life balance ", "living", "security", " life satisfaction ", " hiring", then it’s easier to become a no gap country. Particularly the "work-life balance" is the most important one. For “There are gaps in the country”, how to strengthen the "work-life balance" to narrow the gap between happiness and economic indicators is an important issue for governments in the future.