World Happiness Report 2015

The world has come a long way since the first World Happiness Report in 2012. Happiness is increasingly considered a proper measure of social progress and a goal of public policy.

The year 2015 is a watershed for humanity, with the pending adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help guide the world community towards a more inclusive and sustainable pattern of global development. The UN member states called for SDGs on the occasion of the Rio+20 Summit, marking the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit. The SDGs will be adopted by heads of state at a special summit at the United Nations in September 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the UN. The concepts of happiness and well-being are very likely to help guide progress towards sustainable development.

Sustainable development is a normative concept calling for all societies to balance economic, social, and environmental objectives in a holistic manner. When countries pursue GDP in a lopsided manner, forgetting about social and environmental objectives, the results can be adverse for human well-being. Many countries in recent years have achieved economic growth at the cost of sharply rising inequalities of income and grave damage to the natural environment. The SDGs are designed to help countries to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectives in harmony, thereby leading to higher levels of well-being for present and future generations.

The SDGs will include goals, targets and quantitative indicators. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, in its recommendations on the selection of SDG indicators, has strongly recommended the inclusion of indicators of subjective well-being and positive mood affect to help guide and measure the progress towards the SDGs. Many governments and experts offer considerable support for the inclusion of happiness indicators in the SDGs. The final SDG indicator list will most likely be decided during 2015-6. We hope that the 2015 World Happiness Report once again underscores the fruitfulness of using happiness measurements for guiding policy making and for helping to assess the overall well-being in each society.