Economist Jeffery Sachs on the report released today: "Getting richer but not happier: It's a familiar story, for people and for nations. The purpose of the World Happiness Report, now in its third edition for 2015, is to remind governments, civil society, and individuals that income alone cannot secure our well-being. True happiness depends on social capital, not just financial capital."
 

Yes, income matters. Economic development is important, especially the escape from extreme poverty. Health matters as well, both physical and mental. No surprises there. But what is perhaps most important is our lives as "social animals," to use Aristotle's famous phrase. Life satisfaction depends on strong social support networks, on generosity and voluntarism, on "generalized trust" among strangers in the society, and on the trust in government. People living in places where government is corrupt suffer the pain of less satisfaction in their own lives.

The basic point that well-being depends not only on wealth but also on the quality of our human relations is at once obvious (who could deny it?) but somehow absent from our politics and our daily discourse. We don't have headlines declaring "trust is down in the U.S." (which it is), but we have endless news headlines declaring "GDP growth has slowed."

Our society increasingly values people and their behavior according to their wealth, not to their integrity. Many of our leading CEOs preside over companies that have committed massive financial crimes -- fraud, price rigging, insider trading, and more -- and have paid tens of billions of dollars in fines; yet these CEOs are still revered because they are rich, and they remain frequent guests at the White House for the same reason. Can there be any doubt why trust is down in the U.S.? Society is more unequal, and our leading businesses seem relentlessly to cut corners, if not to flagrantly break the law.

The report can help, gradually and step by step, to reverse this moral decline, to rebuild social trust and faith in government. Of course, this won't happen quickly. Money will once again dominate U.S. politics in the 2016 election; our candidates are already bought. Yet by comparing the countries at the top of the happiness tables with those (like the U.S.) lower down, we have much to learn, and much to reform.