Media Clipping – March 9, 2006, The Chronicle-Herald, Opinion

Are you happy and wealthy - or what?

By Jim Meek

IT MUST be something they put in the tequila, for it is now reported that Mexicans are happier than almost everyone on the planet except the Irish.

And who's going to argue with an Irishman, a little more than a week before St. Patrick's Day?

Besides, the Irish are rich – the fabled beneficiaries of an economic miracle.

But the Mexicans are poor.

Per capita income in the land of the world's worst police force is under $10,000 US per person, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Yet they are a cheerier, less dour lot than Canadians, who struggle by on annual per capita incomes of more than $30,000 US. Indeed, even Canada's super rich are a worried lot, according to data released this week by Sensus Research Inc. (Imagine this: Canadians with net worth of more than $10 million fret that their kids might be lazy.)

Anyway, you get the picture: The people of Mexico report themselves to be happier than citizens of the country that God gave to Wayne Gretzky?

I found this tidbit tucked away in the OECD's report Going for Growth 2006. This 142-page page-turner has the riveting subtitle Structural Policy Indicators and Priorities in OECD Countries.

I actually paid the Paris-based agency $47 US for this report, after reading that it included a review of what it calls "alternative measures of well-being."

Now, this may not sound like Mars-shaking news to NHL fans out there. But I couldn't have been more surprised if Don Cherry had announced he was going to make a movie called Brokeback Locker Room. The OECD, you see, is one of the champions of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – which measures the total value of goods and services produced by a country.

So how do you measure economic growth? Look at GDP in 2005, versus 2004, and turn the difference into a percentage. Usually, in Canada, the percentage seems to be two or three or something steady and dull like that.

You see, no one in Canada except Don Cherry - did you hear about his new movie, by the way? - ever does anything extravagant.

That goes for growing the economy too quickly or being too happy.

Anyway, the OECD has now discovered that the GDP may not be an overwhelmingly satisfying measure of "well-being," even though it yields the pure beauty of a real number that no one can dispute.

As the agency's report says, the GDP "makes no allowance" for consuming non-renewable resources at the expense of future generations.

Nor does it measure the value of leisure to a society, or discount the production of what the report calls "bads" - i.e. pollution or environmental deterioration.

In short, GDP measures growth grossly, and doesn't give a hoot if economic activity is produced by (non-Iraqi) terrorists developing weapons of mass destruction - or Girl Guides selling cookies.

Thus the new attempt to measure well-being. Well, it's actually not new. Atlantic Canada has long had its own Genuine Progress Index, produced by the good people at GPI Atlantic.

And Bhutan has generated a measurement called Gross National Happiness - just to confound those people who can't put a value on the sunrise.

What is telling about this story is that a buttoned-down agency like the OECD is finally conceding that progress cannot be measured by GDP growth alone.

Mind you, connections can be made between conventional wealth and measures of well-being. Affluent societies tend to have healthier people. In addition, higher per capita income levels are associated with a feeling of belonging to a "group or wider community."

Misery, though, seems to be equally at home everywhere. Or as the OECD puts it, "negative indicators – victimization, incarceration and suicides – bear no relationship to GDP."

And what about those happy Mexicans?

When you roll together the subjective measurements of well-being - including "mean happiness" and "mean life-satisfaction" – Mexico emerges as the fourth happiest nation in the 30 democracies of the OECD.

Denmark ranks No. 1, though I know the survey was completed in that nation's pre-Islamic cartoon era. Ireland finishes second. And Canada ranks 10th. (Canadians are probably getting grumpier as they age – most people do, according to this report.)

Anyway, no other poor nations keep Mexico company at the top end of the happiness rankings, and even the OECD can't seem to find an explanation for it all.

Nothing the matter with that, mind you. A little mystery like this one won't hurt us a bit. It even leaves me feeling kind of happy – or maybe even ecstatic, by Canadian standards.

Jim Meek is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. He is also editor of The Inside Out Report, a quarterly journal based on public opinion research.

Copyright © 2006 Jim Meek, All Rights Reserved