It is difficult for outsiders to gauge people's sense of well-being, simply by viewing their lives. And yet despite the difficulty, economists seem increasingly determined to do just that, by trying to wrestle life's intangibles into measurable data.
    Forty years after the Gross National Happiness index was invented by the King of Bhutan, happiness is finally gaining attraction as a serious national indicator. Last week, economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents 34 major economies, told a packed auditorium in Paris that they hoped their Better Life Index—launched a year ago—would persuade governments to focus as much on factors like environment and community cohesiveness, as on GDP measurements like productivity and income. "The index of material conditions is still extremely important," the OECD's chief statistician Martine Durand told the audience of about 350 people, including economists and officials from around the world. "But what we are saying is that there is more to life than just money."
    Now several countries seem to have taken note. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services is working on a national happiness index for Americans (whose "pursuit of happiness," The Washington Post noted, is fundamental to the country) that the U. S. would then track, much as it does income and working hours. And last year, in the midst of massive spending cuts, Britain's Office of National Statistics began a Well-Being Index, at a cost of $ 3 million a year, collecting statistics on people's levels of anxiety and confidence. Surprisingly, the first index showed Brits being generally happy with life, with older people being happiest of all.
    But no effort seems to match the ambition and scope of the OECD's Better Life Index. Launched in May last year, it collates statistics in 36 countries (Russia and Brazil signed on this month) on 24 indicators; as of this year, those include gender and inequality. There are factors on the list that seem tricky to quantify, like "work-life balance," and "life satisfaction," as well as the more obvious ones like education, health, and income.
    Having worked for years to design the index, OECD statisticians then confronted the complexities of measuring factors which were subjective and vague. So they launched an online tool called "Your Better Life Index," allowing people anywhere to rank how important each factor on the list is to them, and then compare how their ideal stacks up against real-life statistics. In effect, the Better Life Index is now whatever each person decides it should be. If education is the most important thing to you, go live in Finland, not Mexico; if work-life balance is most important, Denmark is your place, while the U. S. ranks near bottom.  By "more to life" (Line 8, Para. 2), Chief statistician Martine Durand suggests ______.