How to measure happiness

如何定义你的幸福感

Rúhé dìngyì nǐ de xìngfú gǎn

不管你相信与否,幸福感研究现已成为发展经济学中最热门的领域之一.在纽约联合国总部召开的"幸福感"经济会议上,与会者就国民幸福总值这一全新经济范式能否取代人均国民生产总值成为衡量国家发展的标尺这一问题展开讨论.

Happiness research, believe it or not, has been one of the hottest fields in development economics. Participants of Well-being and Happiness, a high-level meeting which took place at the UN's General Assembly in New York, discussed a new economic paradigm called Gross National Happiness (GNH) to replace the traditional per capita Gross National Product (GNP) as a gauge of national progress.

现在越来越多的经济学家致力于研究幸福感的构成,并向政府提出如何最大程度提高国民幸福感的建议.受联合国委托, 美国哥伦比亚大学地球研究所近日发布了首份《全球幸福指数报告》.报告显示,全球最幸福的国家为北欧的丹麦、挪威、芬兰及荷兰,而最不幸福的则是非洲国家多哥、贝宁、中非共和国和塞拉利昂.

More and more economists are committed to studying what constitutes happiness and making recommendations to governments about how best to increase it. Columbia University's Earth Institute in the US recently published the first World Happiness Report, commissioned by the UN. The report finds that the world's happiest countries are in northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Netherlands) and the most miserable are in Africa (Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone).

幸福感研究人员将人的感受分为"情绪幸福"（每日的心情起伏）和"可评估幸福"（一个人对其生活的总体评估）.他们建立了各种指标,从不同角度来评估幸福感,问题包括："你昨天有多快乐？""综合各方面因素,你对现在整个生活的满意度如何？"还有选择题如"总体来说,你觉得自己：非常快乐、相当快乐、不是很快乐、或者一点都不快乐？"

Happiness researchers break down people's feelings into "affective happiness" (everyday ups and downs) and "evaluative happiness" (a person's overall assessment of his or her life). They have constructed indicators that look at happiness from different vantage points, using questions such as "How happy were you yesterday?"; "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?"; and "Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy or not at all happy?"

毫无疑问,这门新兴学科正在改进人们对于幸福的理解.而《全球幸福指数报告》的起草者们指出：幸福感是可以进行客观衡量的；不同的社会与时代,幸福的定义也会存在系统性差异；幸福具有可预见原因,与许多具体事物密切相关,如财富、收入分配、健康以及政治制度,因此政府应该可以做到创建适当条件以提升国民幸福感.

No doubt this emerging science is improving the understanding of what happiness is. But the authors of the World Happiness Report argue that happiness can be measured objectively; that it differs systematically across societies and over time; that happiness has predictable causes and is correlated to specific things (such as wealth, income distribution, health and political institutions); and that therefore it should be possible for government to create the right conditions for happiness to flourish.

起草者们希望各国政府制定公共政策时,能以幸福感为指导依据,而不是他们现在所使用的国民生产总值.

The authors want governments to use happiness as a guide to public policy, rather as they use GNP now.

词语解释：

范式 （fànshì） paradigm

标尺 （biāochǐ） gauge

致力于 （zhìlìyú） commit oneself to

委托 （wěituō） commission

起伏 （qǐfú） up and down

(Source: myechinese.com)