TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blanchflower,David G.
AU  - Oswald,Andrew J.
TI  - Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11416
PY  - 2005
Y2  - June 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11416
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11416.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David G. Blanchflower
Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH  03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2536
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: David.G.Blanchflower@Dartmouth.EDU

Andrew Oswald
Department of Economics
and also CAGE Research Center 
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
England
Tel: 44-01203-5235
Fax: 44-01203-5230
E-Mail: a.j.oswald@warwick.ac.uk
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-01-01
AB  - According to the well-being measure known as the U.N. Human Development Index, Australia now ranks 3rd in the world and higher than all other English-speaking nations.  This paper questions that assessment.  It reviews work on the economics of happiness, considers implications for policymakers, and explores where Australia lies in international subjective well-being rankings.  Using new data on approximately 50,000 randomly sampled individuals from 35 nations, the paper shows that Australians have some of the lowest levels of job satisfaction in the world.  Moreover, among the sub-sample of English-speaking nations, where a common language should help subjective measures to be reliable, Australia performs poorly on a range of happiness indicators.  The paper discusses this paradox.  Our purpose is not to reject HDI methods, but rather to argue that much remains to be understood in this area.
ER  -