Abstract
On average, Belgians with a decent income, good health, a relationship and work are happier than others. So couldn’t we simply use reported happiness as an indicator for steering or evaluating policy? If all citizens want to be happy, it would be very easy to make political decisions using an overall happiness score as a guiding policy indicator.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, see the article by Kahneman, Wakker and Sarin (1997) with the title: “Back to Bentham?”.
- 2.
In the MEQIN survey, we used the TIPI questionnaire developed by Gosling et al. (2003). This scale asks people to what extent they agree with ten statements about their personality.
- 3.
As in Chap. 20, these figures are based solely on the answers of the reference people in the family, as they are the only people who answered the questions about housing quality and living environment.
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Capéau, B. et al. (2020). As Long as We’re Happy …?. In: Well-being in Belgium. Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion and Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58509-9_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58509-9_22
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