What do Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ben Bernanke have in common? One thing, anyway: they have all discussed “wellbeing” as a better measure of success than gross domestic product. With the wind of political and economic interest behind it, why is more not happening to change the focus of public policy?

安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)、戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)、尼古拉•萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)和本•伯南克(Ben Bernanke)有什么共同之处？最起码的一个共同之处是：他们全都提出，用民众幸福感衡量成功比用国内生产总值(GDP)好。政治和经济界人士纷纷对此表示了兴趣，但为何公共政策的重点却没有多大改变呢？

GDP is entrenched as the yardstick of progress. But politically, it never seems the right moment in the economic cycle to switch focus. Promote wellbeing in a recession and you will be accused of trying to divert attention from falling output. Demote GDP in a recovery and your spin-doctors will complain you are throwing away a success story.

GDP作为衡量进步的标尺根深蒂固。但从政治上来说，似乎经济周期中的哪个时段都不适合改变政策重点。在经济衰退中致力提升民众幸福感，你会被指责为试图转移人们对GDP不断下降的关注。

GDP – the total sum of the goods and services we produce – not only fails to reflect the distribution of income, it also omits feelings, not easily reducible to monetary values. But efforts to broaden it face serious challenges. First, how do you define wellbeing? Second, where are the data? Third, what do we really know about what drives changes in wellbeing? And so, fourth and most important, is there any point? Would, or should, a focus on wellbeing change anything that governments, companies and individuals do?

在经济复苏期间降低对GDP的重视，你的政治顾问们将会抱怨你不好好利用一个成功的故事。

It is a fair list of questions. Good answers have, slowly, been reached – and, in a report commissioned by the Legatum Institute, I and my co-authors have brought them together. First, of the definitions of wellbeing accepted as valid, “life satisfaction” seems the most useful. Second, most developed countries now collect data on wellbeing, and the OECD club of mainly rich nations has provided a framework that helps comparison. Third, research is rapidly building our understanding of the drivers of wellbeing. And fourth, to the question, “is there any point?” my answer is resoundingly “yes”. Focusing on wellbeing would, and should, change public policy.

GDP是指我们创造的商品和服务的价值总和。它不仅未能反映出收入的分配，而且还忽视了人们的感情需求，这种感情需求不能被简单地以货币价值衡量。但扩大GDP的定义面临严峻的挑战。首先，你如何定义幸福感？其次，相关数据从哪里得到？第三，我们真的知道影响幸福感的因素吗？因此第四点、也是最重要的一点是，这样做有意义吗？将幸福感作为政策重点是否会让政府、企业和个人的做法发生改变吗？

Our report identifies areas to address: health, social care, and law and order. Notably, they are where the goods and services involved do not have market prices, or whose prices often do not properly reflect the broader value people ascribe to them. They are areas where it is not always possible to make a well-informed choice in a well-functioning market. They are areas where policy has to be directed at things that just happen to you, such as falling ill or being robbed; or where it is easy to make bad choices, perhaps because of a lack of information or in response to behavioural influences. So researchers are building models of how people actually behave rather than – as in traditional, “rational” models – how we assume they do.

针对这一系列问题，人们慢慢地找到了答案。我们在受列格坦研究所(Legatum Institute)委托撰写的一份报告中总结出了几点。首先，在被认为有效的幸福感定义中，“生活满意度”似乎是最有用的。第二，大多数发达国家现在都收集了有关幸福感的数据，而主要由富裕国家组成的经合组织(OECD)提供的框架则有助于我们进行比较。第三，相关研究让我们很快对影响幸福感的因素有所了解。第四，对于“这有意义吗？”的问题，我的回答是非常响亮的“是的”。着眼于幸福感将会而且一定会使公共政策发生转变。

So what would this all add up to? Let us imagine that after the next election the prime minister tells the cabinet that, in the next spending review, money will be allocated to maximise its impact on public wellbeing. Ministers will have to do a lot of rebudgeting.

我们在报告中指出应从这几个领域着手：健康、社会关怀，以及法律和秩序。这些领域中的商品和服务没有市场价格，或者它们的价格往往没有如实反映出人们认为其具有的更广泛的价值；在这些领域中，即使在一个运作正常的市场中，人们也不一定总是能够做出明智选择；这些领域的政策必须针对刚刚发生在你身上的事情，比如生病或者遭遇抢劫，或者是在你很容易做出糟糕选择的方面，比如因为信息匮乏或者对某些行为做出回应。因此研究人员正在创建用于表现人们实际上会怎么做的模型，而不是我们假设他们会怎么做的模型，也就是传统的“理性”模型。

Our report looks at four areas in particular: mental health and character building; community; income and work; and governance. Possibly its most significant conclusion is that mental health is a crucial determinant of life satisfaction and should be treated as professionally as physical health.

那么所有这些将会导致什么结果？让我们想象一下，在下一次大选之后，首相将会告诉内阁，在下次支出审查期间，将拨出资金用于尽可能扩大对公众幸福感的影响。部长们将不得不大幅度地重新编制预算。

This would be a radical challenge to the Department of Health. Our conclusions should also echo through other public services and departments, from Communities to the Treasury to Education. We need to support parents and build pupils’ life skills. Not only will this prepare children better for adulthood, but happier children also learn better. Policy should shift to promoting volunteering and charitable giving, addressing loneliness and recreating a built environment that is sociable and green. As well as promoting economic growth, we should aim to reduce unemployment through active welfare policies such as welfare-to-work; wellbeing data, unlike GDP measures, show the psychological effects of unemployment. Similarly, defining poverty solely in income terms omits much.

我们的报告尤其侧重四个方面：心理健康和品格塑造；社区；收入和工作；治理。该报告最重要的结论或许是，心理健康是决定生活满意度的一个关键因素，应该和生理健康一样得到专业治疗。

Above all, the pursuit of wellbeing should accelerate the shift to preventive action and behavioural analysis. It would not remove the hard choices that will confront any government. But I strongly believe it would provide a better, broader, more robust framework for making those choices well.

这将给英国卫生部(Department of Health)带来严峻挑战。其他公共服务机构和部门——从社区部到财政部再到教育部——也应该对我们的结论做出响应。我们需要赡养父母，需要培养学生们的生活技能。这不仅能够使孩子们为以后的成年生活做好充分准备，而且他们也会更快乐且学得更好。政策应该转向促进自愿服务和慈善活动，解决孤独问题，重现和谐、绿色的建筑环境。除了推动经济增长以外，我们还应该致力于通过“以工代赈”等积极的福利政策来降低失业率。与GDP指标不同，幸福感数据显示出失业对人们的心理影响。同样，单纯按照收入水平定义贫困远远不够。

The writer is chairman of Frontier Economics and a former cabinet secretary and co-author of ‘Wellbeing and Policy’

最重要的是，致力于提升幸福感会促使人们把重点转向预防活动和行为分析。任何政府都不会因此就不用面对艰难选择。但我坚信，它将提供更好、更全面也更为健全的框架，有利于政府做出明智选择。