Promoting Greater Human Wellbeing: Interacting the Happiness Hypothesis and Religion

现代资本主义社会在促进经济增长和提高生活水平方面取得了惊人的成功。这些成就现在正开始被主要新兴经济体分享。然而，跨国家和学科的研究现在经常表明，这种日益增长的繁荣并没有伴随着幸福感的增加。事实上，在犯罪、精神疾病、家庭破裂以及对社区和志愿服务的信任度下降等方面，情况往往正好相反。这种财富增加但幸福却没有增加的困境通常被称为繁荣的悖论。幸福假说是这些争论的一个关键切入点，它的重要性越来越大，涉及到经济学、经济史、心理学和社会学等学科的研究。从本质上讲，它承认个人年收入超过2万美元与幸福感的增加根本不相称。在这个总和之上，幸福的其他现有特征变得更加重要，包括个人关系、家庭生活和友谊、邻里之间的共同信任，以及道德、哲学或生活目的（包括宗教）的问题。所有这些特征的累积效应将整个辩论推向了宗教传统和经验的中心。然而，尽管目前的世俗研究清楚地认识到宗教福祉对幸福的重要性，但宗教对这场辩论的实际贡献仍未得到充分研究。因此，该提案将通过汇集学者和反思实践者（主要是英国人，但也包括瑞典和美国人）的网络，寻求发展宗教对幸福假说的贡献。他们将参与并讨论现有幸福研究揭示的关键特征和指数（包括工作的性质和重要性，收入，心理健康和灵性，精神资本和全球化，价值观和美德，道德和正义，不平等，公平贸易，宗教金融作为穆斯林传统）。因此，该网络将设法详细说明宗教对这些特征和指数的贡献的性质和程度，包括宗教提供的任何附加价值的性质和程度。这些新发现将通过与主流经济学的关系以及探索适当的衡量体系进行检验。研究网络将寻求在这项建议的生命周期之后，通过以这些初步发现为基础的进一步研究应用继续下去。

Modern capitalist societies have been astonishingly successful in promoting economic growth with all that means for increasing standards of living. These achievements are now beginning to be shared by leading emerging economies. Yet research across nations and disciplines is now regularly suggesting that this increasing prosperity has not been accompanied by increasing happiness or wellbeing. Indeed, the opposite has often been the case in terms of major growth in crime, mental illness, and family breakdowns, and declining trust in neighbourhoods and volunteering. This predicament of increasing wealth but not increasing happiness is often referred to as the paradox of prosperity.The happiness hypothesis is a key entrypoint into these debates, is of growing significance, and involves research from such disciplines as economics, economic history, psychology and sociology. Essentially, it recognises that increasing individual annual incomes above $20,000 p.a. is not commensurate with increasing happiness at all. Above that sum, other existing features of happiness become far more important, including personal relationships, family life and friendships, shared trust in neighbourhoods, and questions of morality and philosophy or purpose of life (including religion). The cumulative effect of all these features propels this whole debate into the centre of religious traditions and experiences. Yet the actual contribution of religion to this debate is under-researched, even though the current secular research clearly recognises the importance of religious wellbeing for happiness.The proposal will therefore seek to develop the religious contribution to the happiness hypothesis by bringing together a network of scholars and reflective practitioners, principally British, but including Swedish and US. They will engage with and debate the key features and indices revealed by the existing happiness research (including the nature and importance of work, income, mental health and spirituality, spiritual capital and globalisation, values and virtues, ethics and justice, inequalities, fair trade, religious finance as Muslim tradition). The network will therefore seek to elaborate the nature and extent of religion's contributions to such features and indices, including the nature and extent of any added value provided by religion. These emerging findings will be tested in relation to mainstream economics, and by exploring appropriate measurement systems. The research network would seek to continue beyond the life of this proposal through further research applications which would build on these initial findings.