😊 The Economics of Happiness: Can Money Buy Well-Being?
In this C1-level reading lesson, students will explore the economics of happiness through five thematic chapters spanning ten pages. Beginning with the historical dominance of GDP as the supreme measure of national success, the text moves through the Easterlin paradox, the psychology of hedonic adaptation, the Scandinavian welfare model, the relationship between work-life balance and life satisfaction, and the growing movement to replace or supplement GDP with well-being indices such as Bhutan's Gross National Happiness and the OECD Better Life Index. Students will encounter advanced vocabulary related to economics, psychology, public policy, and philosophy, and engage with interactive vocabulary exercises, matching activities, fill-in-the-blank practice, and a comprehensive comprehension quiz.
Lesson Plan
- Chapter I: The GDP Illusion — origins of GDP, what it measures and what it misses, Simon Kuznets's warning, and the fetishisation of growth
- Chapter II: The Easterlin Paradox — income and happiness, diminishing returns, hedonic adaptation, social comparison, and the treadmill effect
- Chapter III: The Nordic Model — Denmark, Finland, Norway, trust, equality, universal welfare, and why Scandinavians consistently rank happiest
- Chapter IV: Work, Time, and Meaning — overwork culture, burnout, the four-day week experiments, purpose, autonomy, and the psychology of meaningful labour
- Chapter V: Measuring What Matters — Bhutan's GNH, the OECD Better Life Index, New Zealand's Wellbeing Budget, degrowth, and reimagining progress
- Highlighted vocabulary with hover definitions throughout all ten pages
Key Vocabulary
Grammar Points
- Complex noun phrases: The systematic failure of GDP to account for environmental degradation, unpaid domestic labour, and the distribution of wealth has led economists to seek alternative measures.
- Inversion after negative adverbials: Not until the publication of the Easterlin paradox did mainstream economics seriously question the link between income and happiness.
- Third conditional: Had policy-makers adopted well-being indices decades earlier, the environmental and social costs of growth-obsessed economics might have been mitigated.
- Advanced passive with double complement: Citizens in Nordic countries are provided with universal healthcare, free education, and generous parental leave from birth.
- Cleft sentences: It is not absolute income but relative income — how much one earns compared to one's peers — that most strongly predicts subjective well-being.
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