Happy life expectancy

Happy life expectancy is calculated by multiplying life expectancy by a happiness index. The first uses life expectancy at birth. The happiness index is the average appreciation of life (with a value from 0 to 1) from the world databases of happiness.

The HDI measures average achievements based on three dimensions: 1. life-span, as measured by life expectancy at birth. 2. Education, as measured by the adult literacy rate and average amount of years spent in school in adults over 25 3. Standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms in US dollars. Veenhoven is critical of the HDI because it measures QOL in terms of input, while never addressing to what extent these input provisions are in fact good for people. Furthermore, the HDI is a rather generalized index that gives a simple average of the three-dimensional achievements mentioned above, which can be expressed in this formula:

One can see that highly developed nations can have high life expectancy rates if those nations rely on excessive measures to keep a person alive. The HDI however does not account for the HOW of a particular dimension, but merely the NET RESULT. In the HDI, a hypothetical nation that had a life expectancy of say 100, would score very highly, regardless of how this nation sustained life. Using the actual HDI for 2004, China ranked number 22 out of 177 nations included in the HDI, right behind Germany (number 21 in the 2004 HDI). One of the reasons China ranked so highly was because its GDP was very high, although its education index and life expectancy are low when compared to other nations, such as the United States, Japan, or Germany.

"The most fundamental problem with this generation of QOL's," writes Veenhoven, "... is that they do not distinguish between means and ends, nor between societal input and societal output." "Economic affluence," he writes, "can hardly be seen as an end in itself." HLE does not mix means and ends; but rather, looks at societal output specifically. For example, while current QOL-indices will look at 'healthcare' and 'health' as a single indicator, HLE focuses on the ends, 'health.' This makes HLE a more specific index than traditional QOL-indices. The output centric method of HLE is also one of its shortcomings. Veenhoven says, "it is of little help in daily piecemeal decision making." He adds, "Because it is a long term measure, it reacts slowly... it is more analogous to climate change than to the weather."

There are startling differences between the QOL-indexes as reported by Veenhoven's method and those of the dominant QOL, the United Nation's HDI. In 1996 the nations with the highest HDI were:

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