Happiness economics

Happiness economics is the study of a country's well-being based not on its GDP or GNP but rather on its population's Gross National Happiness (GNH). Although its usefulness is yet to be determined, it has become a subject of interest and often a measure of comparison with the traditional forms of measuring market health.

Background
There is a recent trend in economics which relates happiness to economic performance and vice-versa. Some studies suggest that happiness is already an economic indicator or at least can be approximately measured. , New economic concepts could now be measured such as the Gross national happiness and the Happy Planet Index. Happy Life Years, a concept brought by Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven is one of the concepts set to measure well-being combining subjective data (subjective life satisfaction, measured on a scale of 0 to 10) with objective data (life expectancy). New Economics Foundation, a British think-tank used this concept to measure the "Happy Planet Index".

On the other hand, a few researchers argue that a bigger economy doesn't always buy happiness. It is argued that happiness could be used as an economic indicator not as a replacement for more traditional measures but as a supplement.