Promoting Happiness Through Public Policy

An article by Tim Hartford on aiming for happiness through public policy. By liberal standards, the idea of explicitly promoting happiness seems so manipulative as to be distasteful (which is unfortunate). It would have been nice to see that issue addressed here, but Hartford focuses on the measurement issues, which are more of a liability only when you're doing across-country comparisons. Given that we know a number of things make people happier, I think we'll see some government policies that nudge people toward greater happiness in some of the more liberal states in the U.S. over the next two decades, but not much at a national level.