A New Social Contract From GDP to Gross National Happiness

For eighty years, this country has measured its success with one number: Gross Domestic Product. GDP counts every monetary transaction. It counts the sale of an opioid and the prison built to house the addict. It counts the cancer treatment, but not the health of the patient. It goes up after a hurricane, when we spend billions rebuilding what was lost. It celebrates the fever, not the recovery.

Since 1970, U.S. GDP has tripled, yet the percentage of Americans reporting they are “very happy” has declined. GDP measures activity. It does not measure well-being.

And because we manage what we measure, we have built a society that is very good at generating economic activity, and very bad at generating security, connection, and dignity. 

The Pursuit of Happiness Needs a Scorecard

If the purpose of our economy, the management of our shared household, is to create the conditions for the pursuit of happiness, then we must use a different scorecard.

This is not a radical idea. It is the oldest idea.

For most of human history, communities measured wealth in health, in shared harvests, in the strength of their children, and in the wisdom of their elders. The shift to measuring everything in dollars is a recent, and catastrophic, narrowing of vision.

The good news is that a correction is already underway in the world. In the 1970s, the king of Bhutan declared that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” They built a national policy around four pillars: sustainable development, environmental conservation, cultural preservation, and good governance. They began to measure loneliness, time spent with family, trust in neighbors, and connection to nature.

Bhutan now ranks among the happiest countries in Asia, despite having a GDP per capita one-twentieth that of the United States.

In 2019, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood before her nation and unveiled the world’s first “well-being Budget.” She said, “We’re measuring our success not just by the state of our finances, but by the state of our people.” The treasury now allocates billions based on five priorities: mental health, child poverty, indigenous reconciliation, digital inclusion, and a low-carbon economy. They are measuring what matters.

These nations have made a profound discovery: what you measure dictates what you prioritize. If you only count dollars, you will prioritize the movement of dollars. If you count well-being, you will build the foundations of well-being.

The New Hampshire Well-Being Index: A Blueprint for Our Future

We don’t have to wait for Washington. We can do this here. In fact, we must.

New Hampshire could become the first state in America to officially adopt a Well-Being Index to guide our budget, our laws, and our vision for the future. This would be the ultimate expression of “Live Free or Die”, not as a slogan of neglect, but as a promise: we will create the conditions where every person has the security to truly live free.

Imagine the Governor standing before the General Court, not just with a financial budget, but with a well-being Report. It would track things like: The Housing Security Rate: The percentage of residents spending less than 30% of their income on shelter.

The Childhood Belonging Index: Measured through surveys of schoolchildren about whether they feel safe, known, and supported.

The Senior Connection Score: Tracking social isolation among residents over 65.

The Community Trust Metric: How many people know their neighbors, volunteer, or trust local government.

The Mental Health of Our Youth: Rates of anxiety, depression, and hope among teenagers.

Every line item in the state budget would then be evaluated against a simple question: Will this improve our Well-Being Index?

That new question changes everything.

Suddenly, funding for school counselors isn’t a “cost.” It’s an investment in the Childhood Belonging Index and the Mental Health of Our Youth.

Building accessory dwelling units isn’t a zoning nuisance. It’s an investment in the Housing Security Rate and the Senior Connection Score.

A living wage isn’t a “burden on business.” It’s the most direct way to improve nearly every metric of family well-being.

The Virtuous Cycle: How Measuring Well-Being Fixes Our Systems

This shift in measurement is more than just symbolic. It’s the master key that unlocks the logjams in all our other systems.

Take housing and schools, the twin crises choking our towns.

Right now, a town looks at a proposal for a new duplex and sees a fiscal threat. Under our broken property tax system, new families mean more children in schools, which means higher local taxes. So the town says no. It zones for exclusion to protect its budget.

But under a Well-Being Index, that same duplex is seen as a well-being asset. It improves the Housing Security Rate for two families. It adds to the town’s economic resilience and social fabric. And because school funding is tied to statewide well-being goals the town is no longer financially punished for growing. The fear is removed. The logjam breaks.

A seminal study in Science found that neighborhoods with higher levels of trust and shared expectations for control, a measure called 'collective efficacy', experienced up to 40% fewer homicides, regardless of their economic disadvantage.

The Economics of Happiness: Not a Cost, but a Dividend

Skeptics will ask the old question: “But how do we pay for it?”

We must ask the new question: “How much do we pay for not doing it?”

The cost of our current system, the one that only measures GDP, is astronomical. We pay for it in: The prison cells we build instead of preschool classrooms. The U.S. spends over $80 billion annually on incarceration; more than double what it spends on Pell Grants for college students.

The emergency room visits we fund instead of preventative care.

The lost productivity of parents who can’t work because they can’t find childcare.

The broken social fabric of towns where no one has time to volunteer because they’re working three jobs.

Study after study shows that investments in well-being yield staggering returns. For low-income children, every $1 invested in preschool yields $8.60 in long-term public benefits through reduced crime, welfare, and health costs. Every dollar spent on lead pipe removal saves $10 in future healthcare and special education costs. Every dollar that prevents a senior from falling into isolation saves countless more in medical and eldercare expenses.

Focusing on future happiness is not a luxury. It is the ultimate fiscal responsibility.

A Covenant with the Future

This book began with a burger and a fact: when people have economic security, they invest in their community.

We have traveled through the systems that steal that security: the housing trap, the property tax squeeze, the corporation that turned from public tool to private power, the democracy auctioned to the highest bidder and a broken medical system.

Each of those systems is a choice. We built them. We can rebuild them.

The pursuit of happiness is not a solo sprint. It is a relay race across generations. Our parents and grandparents passed us a baton; a promise of liberty, a chance to build a good life on a foundation of security. 

Now it is our turn to run our leg of the race. Our task is not just to pass the baton, but to repair the track.

A New Hampshire Well-Being Index is more than a policy. It is a covenant. A promise that we will measure our success by the strength of our people and the health of our places. A promise that we will count what counts.

We are not a poor state. We are a rich community that has been using the wrong tool to measure the health of our society. Let’s build an economy that remembers its purpose: to manage our shared household so that everyone in the house can thrive.

The future is not something that happens to us. It is something we create, something we build, and something we choose together.

Let’s get to work.