Town Census Measuring Happiness

link here to article

The mayor of Somerville, MA has added some questions to the town census that measure well-being. He hopes to get a better idea about what the town can do to alter the well-being of its citizens. Since well-being is the ultimate goal of an economy, and of government, and it don't cost anything extra to add the questions to the census, it makes sense to measure it.

My guess is that the effort has been influenced by location of Tufts University and the GDAE Institute which is associated with it. GDAE has been making the case for well-being as the ultimate objective economic activity for some time. It views the well-being of households and the community, along with the public and private sector as the core sectors of the economy and of economics for the 21st century.