Chapter 15gain in life- satisfaction lasted for say 10 years, the gain is 4
point- years of life- satisfaction— another bargain.
Turning to regulation, an obvious issue is “Do smoking
bans improve human well- being?” This has been studied
using data on more than half a million Europeans since
1990.^21 The conclusion is that the ban increased the life-
satisfaction of those smokers who wanted to quit, without
significant negative effects on any other group.
Conclusion
To conclude, we believe that policy analysis should be based
on happiness as the measure of benefit (except where tradi-
tional methods actually work). The approach is developed
more formally in online Annex 15. We think it should be
generally applied throughout the public services and by
NGOs. As the new method took hold, people would be-
come familiar with how many point- years of happiness per
dollar were typically acceptable and which were not.
But will policy makers ever use this new- fangled ap-
proach? If they want to get reelected, politicians have every
reason to do so, for analysis of European elections since
1970 shows that the life- satisfaction of the people is the best
predictor of whether a government gets reelected.^22 It is a
more powerful predictor than either economic growth, un-
employment, or inflation.
Moreover at present policy makers have no clear focus.
Most policy proceeds by a series of ad hoc arguments, with
no attempt to make one argument commensurate with
another. Well- being research offers information of real sub-
stance to fill that vacuum. It is early days yet, and the num-