Happiness in the Sustainable Development Goals: Adding to the Quagmire of Quantification?

This review paper takes as its starting point a number of intriguing conundrums. Firstly, there is much interest in the research community in the assessment of happiness as a part of sustainability, including the development of indicators and indices, although it is often acknowledged that quantifying something as subjective as happiness is a challenge. Secondly, despite this compelling and oft-repeated case, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator framework has just one mention of ‘happiness’ in all the 267 indicator metadata documents. While ‘sustainable happiness’ is often stated as a desired outcome of the SDGs, it seems that happiness has not been regarded as part of the ongoing assessment process. The review answers the question as to why that should be so. The methodology is founded on a review of the existing literature on SDG indicators and happiness, especially the insights gained from established examples of happiness indices, such as the Gross National Happiness Index (GNHI) of Bhutan and the Happy Planet Index (HPI), as well as other initiatives to create such indices in parallel to the SDGs, such as the ‘SDGs for Happiness’ and the ‘Sustainable Wellbeing Index’. Given that indicators and indices are typically intended to attract attention from the media, the paper explores the reporting of various happiness indices in one form of media—newspapers. One would expect that happiness indicators and indices would have an attraction for journalists, but do they? The review concludes that the complexity of measuring happiness on top of a ‘quagmire’ (as some authors put it) of quantification challenges with the SDG indicators seems the most likely explanation for its absence to date. But with experience gained by 2030, maybe there will be an opportunity to consider the inclusion of happiness, drawing insights in particular from the GNHI and HPI, for a successor SDG indicator framework.