GEORGETOWN, Texas, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Scholars looking for a way to quantify happiness plan to gather at a Texas university next month to discuss advances in the emerging discipline.
Southwestern University is hosting the meeting Feb. 9-10, which will draw an economist from Harvard, a psychologist from Knox College and a neuroscientist from Houston's Baylor College of Medicine, the school said Wednesday.
Organized by Southwestern professor A. J. Senchack, participants want to find alternatives to such widely accepted measures of well being as the gross domestic product.
"Negative events that reduce well being actually increase GDP," said Senchack, explaining that Hurricane Katrina, for example, was a personal disaster for hundreds of thousands of U.S. Gulf Coast citizens but helped lift GDP because rebuilding costs.
One example of an alternative to GDP is the "Genuine Progress Indicator" created by the public policy organization Redefining Progress. The GPI begins with the GDP and then adjusts for income distribution and leisure time, adds household and volunteer work, and subtracts the costs of crime, family breakdown and pollution.
Senchack also hopes his meeting will encourage public policies that take well-being into account, rather than solely focusing on economic growth.
