[jquery]

Nor should it try, because it's an objective measure, whereas HPI is completely subjective measure. Apples and oranges.

I'm also not convinced self-reported happiness is accurate across cultures. How do you control for cultural variations in the question "are you happy?" Diverse cultures have deep differences of understanding when approaching that question.

[chakde]

Well what gets measured gets improved.

What's subjective to you is pretty objective to me - the health impact of unhappiness, for example, will reflect in healthcare costs. Which btw makes up 15% of US GDP. Now is that even real GDP or just a manufactured problem - with doctors and lawers and insurance guys all making money off of health problems of consumers.

See this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-...

[jquery]

I don't think you understood me.

For the same baseline level of internal well-being, people will respond to the question "how happy are you?" differently depending on their culture. Do you understand how this presents a problem when measuring happiness across cultures? That is why I refer to it as subjective. Cultures change over time, so a change in the HPI might simply be a reflection of that.

That being said, I do not believe that just because a measure is subjective, it is useless. Of course it's useful. It's just important to understand what exactly you're measuring.

[chakde]

My point is that it is culture that affects happiness, not merely internal or material well being.

So taking into account cultural variations is meaningless when what I'm interested in measuring is the end result.