By Kim Tong-hyung
Korean policymakers will look beyond traditional indices of economic and social well-being as they attempt to create a new formula for measuring national happiness. But it’s also true that all indicators scream out loud that Koreans are more miserable than ever.
There have been a slew of surveys by international organizations in recent years aimed at providing a more convincing way to judge a nation’s well-being rather than just calculating its economic output. And these reports suggest that Korean lives are stuck in a purgatory between mediocrity and severe gloom.
Korea ranked 26th among the 34 developed economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the Paris-based think tank’s ``Better Life Initiative’’ last year.
The Better Life Index uses 11 separate measures ― housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance ― to piece together an overall impression of progress. While Korea was rated positively in the jobs and education area, it was near the bottom in the categories of housing, environment and work-life balance.
The United Nations (UN) World Happiness Report announced last month had Korea listed as the 56th happiest place to live in among the 156 nations it surveyed, squeezed between wealthy Scandinavian nations like Denmark, Finland and Norway at the top of the table and sub-Saharan nations, including Sierra Leone and Togo, at the bottom.
Korea and other Asian industrial juggernauts Japan (44th) and Taiwan (46th), ranked behind the likes of Costa Rica, Malaysia and Thailand, providing evidence that the link between a country’s wealth and its mood is not always coherent. China finished 112th on the list.
The Korea Development Institute (KDI), Korea’s own state-run think tank, agreed in a study last year that the country is becoming one of the worst places to live among rich nations.
The KDI’s quality-of-life survey placed Korea 27th among the 39 industrialized nations that make up the OECD and the Group of 20, based on data for 2008. The country only managed middle rankings in the three other categories that were analyzed ― economic growth potential, infrastructure and environment.
The KDI said that Korea was becoming an example of the “Easterlin Paradox,” a key concept in happiness economics named after American economist Richard Easterlin. This argues that, once a country is rich enough for people to have sufficient income to meet basic needs, additional wealth doesn’t result in extra happiness.
Officials at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance have yet to provide detailed information on how they plan to design their happiness index. However, it’s easy to imagine them putting more weight on employment over other factors.
``There have been a lot of discussions on the limitations of gross domestic product (GDP) calculations as an indicator of national happiness, especially after the UN report in April. We agree about the need for a better measuring method for happiness,’’ said an official from the ministry’s world economy division.
``We need to continue pursuing sustainable systems for welfare and also cope with the problems posed by the `3Ds’ ― degradation in environment, depression in human resources and deficit in confidence. The most important task for us is to encourage work and wealth creation and build a better environment for creating jobs, which will be integral to boosting income. We must also guard against excessive social welfare programs that could deplete the national coffers.’’
While all the global talk about creating happiness indices are built around the argument that there are more ways to measure the quality of life than just economic output, the reasons for Koreans’ increasing misery seem to be fairly economic.
The widening wealth gap, decreasing social mobility and deteriorating family finances suggest that the country’s gross national happiness will continue to sink like stone.
The recent recession triggered by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers only widened the chasm between the wealthiest and the rest, and the diminishing belief in social mobility has some observers wondering whether the country is entering a perfect storm of civil discontent.
Average Koreans continue to see their living standards deteriorate as wages fail to keep up with the rising cost of living. Workers’ share of national income was safely above 60 percent in the early-to-mid 1990s, but fell to 58 percent in 2000 and only rose to 59.2 percent in 2010, according to government figures, as the country’s economic policies continue to put exports before consumption.
The nation’s historically-high household debt, at near one quadrillion won, matches an entire year’s GDP, while an alarmingly large portion of working-age Koreans remain sidelined from the labor market.