The gist: We've been scratching in the wrong place by trying to maximize gross domestic product instead of gross national happiness.

The details: In recent years, a number of economists and social scientists have discovered a surprising trend. Although the United States and Canada have traditionally used financial indicators such as GDP, the Dow Jones, and consumer confidence to measure a society’s well-being, these indicators are a poor measure of how happy our citizens are. In fact, as nations become wealthier the correlations between income and happiness become weaker.

In other words, we've been scratching in the wrong place. We've been trying to maximize gross domestic product instead of gross national happiness.

Happiness research is a field populated by economists, psychologists, and other social scientists who are trying to figure out empirically sound ways to measure people's sense of satisfaction with their lives and communities. Happiness heavyweights in the Northwest include John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, a professor of economics who has studied social capital and subjective well-being.

A number of studies testify to these findings.

• A paper titled "Money, Sex, and Happiness: An Empirical Study,” which used data from surveys of 16,000 Americans, found that, not surprisingly, money apparently has only limited ability to "buy" happiness. In general, wealthier people are a little happier than the less well off, but it takes an awful lot of income to "buy" the happiness that companionship and community provide for free.
• A thorough review of research on happiness, published in 2004, spotlighted the disparities between economic indicators, on the one hand, and trends in how happy and satisfied in life people were, on the other. For example, over the past 50 years, while income in the U.S. has soared and per capita GDP has tripled, life satisfaction has remained virtually flat, even as Americans' mental health has plummeted.
• In a ranking of life satisfaction among 10 groups, the Pennsylvania Amish were found to be as happy as members of the wealthiest sector of the United States.
• Depression rates in the United States have climbed perhaps tenfold in a span of 50 years, and the incidence of anxiety disorders has also skyrocketed.

Measuring well-being--and maximizing it through policy shifts--would benefit society as a whole, not just individuals. Research suggests that happy workers are more productive, and happy people go on to earn more money, have stronger immune resistance to cold and flu viruses, suffer fewer fatal accidents, and live longer.

The implications of this research are profound and far-reaching. A measure of human quality of life could put into proper perspective such flawed indicators as the Dow and the consumer confidence index, and--even more important--help us better assess the world that we are creating for our children.

A first step is to develop more consistent and systematic ways of measuring “subjective well-being.”

Sightline hopes that an indicator of well-being will some day be feasible for the Cascadia Scorecard, a regional index of progress.