In this article, the question of how best to measure a country’s well-being is brought up. GDP has been the traditional measure, but recently some economists have been questioning if there is a better indicator. Some economists are now interested in

how happy people are as a way of looking at the well-being of a country. So what’s the best way of measuring happiness? The approach taken in this article seems to be surveys directly asking people. The accuracy of such results can be questioned, but nonetheless it is interesting to see some people moving toward such a subjective indicator over a clear, objective number like GDP. Perhaps numbers don’t give the full story.

Source: Freakonomics Blog