World Happiness Report 2013

For the second year, the World Happiness Report has been published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Earth Institute of Columbia University. It can be downloaded at http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/09/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdf. In addition to its own ranking of countries by levels of happiness, it includes an analysis of the OECD approach to measuring subjective well-being.

A particularly interesting new addition is Jeffrey Sachs chapter on "Restoring virtue ethics in the quest for happiness" which looks beyond the consumer society definition of happiness to look at the role of ethics and virtuous behaviour as the missing dimension in happiness. He looks back to Buddhism and Aristotle, and traces the history of economic thought through Adam Smith and Keynes to hyper-consumerism, before asking if a return to virtue ethics is possible. From the IEF perspective, that is exactly what we are working for.