Abstract: With increasing severity of social illness caused by excessive pursuit of GDP growth, the happiness index is paid special attention to by all sectors of the society. Happiness index once again declares the ultimate value of development, vividly interprets connotation of national politics, and plays an active role in decreasing worshipping GDP, judging social movement, monitoring public psychological orientation, and covering shortage of social function of GDP. Meanwhile, problems, as being difficult in evaluation, low in validity and hard in finding a united statistic tool, exist in happiness index. Thus, the government should be cautious in using happiness index. Happiness index can be used as a sub-index to comprehensively judge social development and harmony, but cannot be used as the only standard in checking the achievements of the administrative officials.

Key words: happiness index, progress, problems