DOES FREEDOM LEAD TO HAPPINESS? ECONOMIC GROWTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE

The preoccupation with economic growth has not led to increase in happiness in the developed world. While it has increased the standards of living, by some measures, it has also increased crime and incarceration, substance abuse and the erosion of social capital, it fuelled the fast food and sex industries, and led to the largest financial and economic crisis since the beginning of the previous century. The current crisis has also revealed another problem: the developing world is financing the developed world, than the other way around, through investments in government bonds of the developed economies. Modern technologies and contemporary organizational structures have created a unique capacity for increasing consumption power through economic growth. However, we do not seem to be concerned with producing those things worth consuming with the economic power so created. The work of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on Development as Freedom showed us a positive way for economic growth through the expansion of instrumental freedoms. However, the economics of happiness have also shown us that people cannot always choose what will make them happy, at least in the long run. Is there a paradox And if not how is this apparent paradox resolved These two questions are addressed in this paper.