The Socialist candidate for the French presidency, Benoit Hamon, says he doesn't believe in the "myth" and "quasi-religion" of growth — it's part of the "consumerist, productivist and materialist model" of development, he argues. That's outside the economic mainstream, and many see those views as a symptom of the meltdown of the global left. But the Global Happiness Report 2017, produced under the auspices of the United Nations, shows that Hamon just may be ahead of the curve.
Since the project's inception five years ago, small, rich Western European nations have led the list. In this year's ranking, compiled using the last three years of data, they make up the top six, with Norway, Denmark and Iceland leading the world. In terms of growth, these nations have long lagged behind the global level.
Meanwhile, China, which has one of the highest sustained growth rates in the world, is not progressing in terms of happiness. The happiness report contains an entire chapter on that, written by Richard Easterlin, Fei Wang and Shun Wang. They pointed out that based on previous studies, China should have seen an increase in well-being of one full point on the 10-point Cantril Scale. Instead, Chinese people are just about as happy as they were in 1990.