“Well being can and should drive public policy, from the most local to the most international levels.”

That’s the finding of new research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center. In a paper published in the International Journal of Wellbeing, postdoc Alejandro Adler and Martin Seligman, the Institute’s founder and director, build on known definitions and measurements of well being. They also describe specific ways this measure can influence policy making.

It’s an issue researchers in the field have been dancing around for some time, but science has finally progressed enough to move the conversation away from a singular focus on gross domestic product. To this point, a strong and increasing GDP had been directly but incorrectly linked to a happier population.

GDP, however, wasn’t created as a social progress indicator.

“Unfortunately, it has become synonymous with that,” Adler said. “What people fundamentally care about universally — and it doesn’t matter when and where — is quality of life, holistic well being. The relationship between increased GDP and well being is a nuanced one and not the direct one that most people assume.”

To reach this conclusion, Adler and Seligman compiled half a century of data on GDP and life satisfaction for 57 countries around the world. They then compared the numbers, which came from outlets like Gallup and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, both within a given year and between years.

“When you plot each country, it really is a curve that increases initially but plateaus very quickly,” Adler said. “After a threshold of about $10,000 per capita per year, there is a quickly decreasing correlation between GDP and mean life satisfaction.” This becomes more pronounced in economies that started poor and grew quickly, like Singapore or South Korea.

The researchers hypothesize this leveling off happens because of one simple factor innate in most of us: ambition beyond material wealth. “Once people fulfill their basic physical needs, human beings aspire to much more,” Adler said, “having a sense of engagement in their work, meaning and purpose in their lives, high-quality relationships, a sense of autonomy.”

Though 70 percent of the analyzed countries did experience this drop off in the economy-well being connection, Adler said there is an exception: In places like Somalia or Cambodia, where a large percentage of the population lives in extreme poverty, GDP matters more because most individuals there do not meet basic survival needs. In such places, Adler and Seligman argue, GDP growth should remain a priority.

Overall, the researchers said they hope these results will place well being on the global development agenda and spark new conversation with decision makers about topics like unemployment, taxes, external factors like airport noise, all areas for which they see well being playing a role in more effective policies. They also want to bring attention to areas draining resources unnecessarily; Adler cites as an example the criminal justice system in the United States.

“There’s more money being put into building jails than schools and universities combined. Even though that might grow GDP, that deters from enhancing social well being,” he said. “You also don’t get to the root cause of why we’re spending so much money incarcerating people rather than educating them.”

One limitation to this work is that it’s new terrain, meaning potentially more pushback. Also, despite having good data already, the researchers said they need more of it and different kinds. 

“The point here is not to substitute but to complement. Then you have a much better understanding of the design and the impact of policies. You can go back and recalibrate,” Adler said. “If we care about well being, we have to start measuring it.”

Funding for this research came from the John Templeton Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.