{"id":1151,"date":"2011-03-10T18:43:44","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T12:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/?p=1151"},"modified":"2011-03-10T18:43:44","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T12:43:44","slug":"how-happy-are-you-a-census-wants-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/10\/how-happy-are-you-a-census-wants-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"How Happy Are You? A Census Wants to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Happy Are You? A Census Wants to Know<\/h1>\n

April 30, 2011; By JOHN TIERNEY: SOMERVILLE, Mass. \u2014 When they filled out the city\u2019s census forms this spring, the people of\u00a0Somerville<\/a> got a new question. On a scale of 1 to 10, they were asked, \u201cHow happy do you feel right now?\u201d<\/span><\/h6>\n
\n

Officials here want this Boston suburb to become the first city in the United States to systematically track people\u2019s happiness. Like leaders in Britain, France and a few other places, they want to move beyond the traditional measures of success \u2014 economic growth \u2014 to promote policies that produce more than just material well-being.<\/p>\n

Monitoring the citizenry\u2019s happiness has been advocated by prominent psychologists and economists, but not without debate over how to do it and whether happiness is even the right thing for politicians to be promoting. The pursuit of happiness may be an inalienable right, but that is not the same as reporting blissful feelings on a questionnaire.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes it matter if I am a little manic right now?\u201d one Somerville resident wrote on the census form. (Apparently not: he gave himself a \u201c10\u201d for happiness.)<\/p>\n

So far, more than 7,500 people have mailed back the survey, some of them clearly not limiting their answers to municipal concerns. In response to the question \u201cHow satisfied are you with your life in general?\u201d one man gave himself only a 6, explaining, \u201cI would like to be three inches taller and speak Quechua fluently.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, Somerville is a perfect test tube for such an experiment. Sandwiched between Harvard and Tufts Universities, the city is a blue-collar bastion with a growing population of young professionals and academics. Somewhat less lovely than its upscale neighbor, Cambridge (but with lower rents), Somerville used to be renowned for crime and nicknamed \u201cSlummerville,\u201d but its reputation and priorities have been changing as it gentrifies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to change our mind-set in how we serve people,\u201d said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone, who has been\u00a0hailed at the White House<\/a> for the city\u2019s pioneering\u00a0program against obesity<\/a>. He called the happiness survey \u201ca no-brainer\u201d that he approved as soon as it was suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities keep careful track of their finances, but a bond rating doesn\u2019t tell us how people feel or why they want to raise a family here or relocate a business here,\u201d Mr. Curtatone said.<\/p>\n

To draw up its questions, Somerville turned to a neighbor, Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor who wrote the 2006 best seller\u00a0\u201cStumbling on Happiness.\u201d<\/a> Dr. Gilbert, who donated his time, is also helping the city do a more detailed telephone survey, using a randomized sample of Somerville\u2019s 76,000 residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial policies are always meant to promote things that promote happiness, so how could it be a bad idea to measure directly the very thing you are trying to maximize?\u201d Dr. Gilbert said. \u201cShould we build more parks or highways? Should workers get longer coffee breaks or more vacation days? We don\u2019t have to guess about the answers to these questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somerville officials say they hope to see how parks and bike paths affect the happiness of people living nearby, or how people\u2019s feelings change when mass transit services are improved.<\/p>\n

The survey that was mailed with the census asks people to rate the nuts-and-bolts aspects of their communities \u2014 the police, the schools, the availability of affordable housing \u2014 as well as the \u201cbeauty or physical setting\u201d of Somerville, an industrial town full of triple-decker houses. The city wants to know: \u201cTaking everything into account, how satisfied are you with Somerville as a place to live?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there are the really touchy-feely questions, seemingly plucked from a personality test. \u201cWhen making decisions, are you more likely to seek advice or decide for yourself?\u201d the survey asks. \u201cIn general, how similar are you to other people you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanessa Lagerman, 28, who has lived in Somerville for six years, is one resident who appreciates the city\u2019s efforts. \u201cSince I\u2019ve been here, I\u2019ve noticed a lot of things the city has been doing, like installing bike lanes,\u201d said Ms. Lagerman, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. As for the survey, \u201cI think it\u2019s a good thing, because policies can be changed to make people happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other residents also said they felt flattered by the city\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad they\u2019re trying to use 21st-century tools to get a feel for what people want,\u201d said Conor Brennan, the owner of P J Ryan\u2019s, a pub in Teele Square. \u201cOf course, any survey like this is going to depend on the mood of the person at that moment. If they filled it out in the middle of this last winter, that\u2019s probably going to lower the score.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Mr. Brennan did not recall receiving the form or filling it out, he did offer an off-the-cuff numeric assessment of his own happiness and that of his family: \u201c8+.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somerville officials hope to create a well-being index that they can track over time and perhaps eventually compare with results in neighboring towns (assuming the other towns follow their example). But they acknowledge that figuring out how their policies affect that index will be a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to see what the baseline data tell us and then expand,\u201d said Tara Acker, director of\u00a0SomerStat<\/a>, the city\u2019s program to analyze data. \u201cIs there a correlation between happiness and open space or green space? If we see low levels of satisfaction correlated to low levels of income, perhaps we want more programs aimed at low-income people.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, city officials said, the arrival of a new and long-sought extension of the Green Line light rail system to Somerville could be a natural experiment to let them track whether happiness goes up among people who live nearby.<\/p>\n

In Britain, a similar happiness survey is being undertaken this spring at the behest of the prime minister, David Cameron, whose administration proposed such drastic spending cuts that violent protests broke out in the street. France, which has had its own riots, has also been analyzing citizens\u2019 happiness.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there has been no such turbulence in Somerville, which prides itself as being\u00a0the place where Marshmallow Fluff was invented<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data may show nothing of interest or they may hold big surprises \u2014 you just can\u2019t tell until you collect them,\u201d said Dr. Gilbert, the Harvard professor. \u201cBut given that it costs nothing to add some questions about happiness to a census that is already going out, why wouldn\u2019t \u00a0you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Ted Siefer contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source: NY Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Happy Are You? A Census Wants to Know April 30, 2011; By JOHN TIERNEY: SOMERVILLE, Mass. \u2014 When they filled out the city\u2019s census forms this spring, the people of\u00a0Somerville got a new question. On a scale of 1 to 10, they were asked, \u201cHow happy do you feel right now?\u201d Officials here want … Continue reading How Happy Are You? A Census Wants to Know<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[205,579,610],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gross-national-happiness","tag-bhutan","tag-gnh","tag-gross-national-happiness-gnh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}