UN’s first International Happiness Day – March 20, 2013 – Going beyond GDP

Don’t Laugh: The UN’s First International Happiness Day is Serious Business – by Frances Moore Lappé
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/got-happiness-first-un-international-day-of-happiness

I never thought I would see the day when the United Nations declared the world’s first International Happiness Day. The purpose of it, the UN says, is “to signal the importance of going beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic progress.” In other words, we need better measures of society’s real wellbeing — including happiness. This happened yesterday! Yesterday also happened to be the release of our new report on one alternative to GDP: the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). We partnered with the Center for Sustainable Economies to write a report on inequality in Maryland through the lens of Maryland’s first-of-a-kind GPI.

Noel Ortega, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, 21 March 2013