ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on using happiness as a measure; it also implies, at least implicitly, a critique of the way we have looked upon societal development until now. Historically, we have measured progress in societies by using monetary metrics – gross national product (GNP) per capita, in particular, is often used as a core metric for the welfare and well-being of societies. This is followed by a discussion of new ways of measuring progress, and the chapter also includes a presentation of some indexes trying to capture monetary as well as non-monetary aspects of societal development, in the context that we need to have a broader set of instruments to measure societal development, which can include sustainability understood in a number of ways.
