| Abstract: |
The thesis mainly focuses on understanding the interconnection between economic outcome and its effect on happiness of economic actors. It aims to challenge the popularly held belief that more money will buy greater satisfaction in life which is mostly true for international comparison showing that countries with higher income tend to report happier than those countries with lower income. One explanation is wealthier people can have better health care, live in safer neighborhoods, and are able to do more fun things. However American economist Richard A. Easterlin (1974) claims that once basic needs are fulfilled happiness at a national level does not increase as income increases and evidence proves existence of the paradox showing that in most industrialized countries people are as happy as they were 50 years ago. Therefore the thesis questions if economic growth doesn’t improve the subjective well-being then should it be the main goal of policy maker while happiness should be the desired end. As an example I chose Kingdom of Bhutan who is trying different idea as a development approach promoting an economic policy not maximizing Gross National Product but so called Gross National Happiness. Despite being desperately poor ranking in 135th place GDP terms and the same position in terms of Human Development Index, Bhutanese people are happy ranking in 8th place by life satisfaction measure worldwide. Further the thesis deals with a question what can Europeans learn from them? What could be applied in economic policies to improve life satisfaction of people in Europe? |
