Poll measures citizens' happiness

An online poll shows that 95% of Chinese believe the performance of the government impacts directly on their happiness. Close to 90% agreed that people’s happiness should be one of the ways of assessing whether government officials are doing their job properly.
The results were from a survey conducted by the Beijing-based China Youth Daily which polled 2,633 people online on the subject of happiness and what makes them happy. However, happiness as a measure of performance drew some mixed opinions.
Yang Yiyong, director of the Institute of Social Development Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, said that happiness is a purely subjective measure and could not be used for scientific research.
China.org.cn reports that in Pingdingshan in Henan province and in Jiangyi in Jiangsu province, a happiness index evaluation system has been developed which will be taken into consideration when assessing their officials’ performance.