Quantifying Life Quality
If you live in Somerville, officials want to know. In fact, they want their city to be the first in the U.S. to systematically track people’s happiness. This spring, along with the city’s census forms, residents received a questionnaire asking them to rate their happiness on a scale from one to 10. So far, more than 7,500 people have mailed back the survey. The city asked Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University internationally recognized for his research on happiness, to guide them through the process of creating the survey....